


X Months of Ending

by thememoriesfire



Category: Skins
Genre: AU, F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-08
Updated: 2010-03-08
Packaged: 2017-10-11 01:17:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thememoriesfire/pseuds/thememoriesfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A reimagining of Skins Series 4, spread over 9 months.  Some elements from the show stay intact; many others change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pandora (Month 1)

She doesn’t understand why, but then that’s not unusual; there’s many things she doesn’t understand, like why her Mum pretends that she’s sorry that things didn’t go well with Thommo, and why Effy couldn’t pick Freds when she first realized that she flippin’ loved him, or even why Thommo thinks that saying sorry is always going to be enough. But this one’s really doing her head in, because Emily looks like she’s been slapped in the face with a fish—it’s kind of what Katie’s face looks like when she looks at Naomi, or Freddie, or Ef, or anyone really—every time that she sees them together.

But they’re still together.

Katie also looks fish-slapped when she sees them riding up; they’re out on a bench outside of college, and Panda’s filing her nails because she doesn’t want to talk to the Beauty people, they all think that she’s stupid for still wanting to be friends with Ef, but they’re the ones who are stupid because they need help figuring out how to file people’s nails.

“You should come, to my mum’s salon,” Katie mumbles next to her, but when Panda turns, Katie’s eyes are like arrows, trained on the scooter coming to a halt, and Panda doesn’t answer and looks at Emily and Naomi, clambering off it.

“I don’t get it, them. It’s bonkers,” she then finally says, when Emily doesn’t look at Naomi once and Naomi looks like she’s going to cry some more (she’s been crying loads; it’s not really like Naomi, Panda thinks, but then she never really knew Naomi, because Naomi’s one of those people who doesn’t bother hiding when someone annoys them, and she knows she annoys Naomi.) They shuffle into the building in a single file of two people, and when they reach the door, she locks eyes with Thomas.

He looks like he got slapped in the face with something bigger; a baboon’s bum, maybe, and Panda looks away again before it starts to hurt some more.

“What is, Panda?” Katie asks. Sometimes Katie’s almost nice, and she’s had a rough year—they all did, really, but Katie doesn’t care that she’s still best friends with Ef, or maybe that’s best friends again. She just likes having a friend herself, and Panda gets that.

“Why that’s still on,” she responds, and then waves at Naomi and Emily in the distance. “I’m not good at relationship stuff, but I know about cheating, and—nobody forgets it, do they. You don’t forget about Freds and Ef, do you? And Thommo never forgot about Cook, and I can’t forget about him and—well, I don’t know who I’m meant to forget about, but when I think of him with someone, it proper cuts, like bees. It’s like bees in my chest.”

Katie doesn’t respond. Her mouth sets a bit, like she swallowed a whole bag of Haribo sour jellies, and Panda realizes it’s because she mentioned Freds and Ef, who are now together, sort of. Ef says that it’s complicated, and Panda stopped asking because she doesn’t even get simple things, most of the time.

“I mean, I know loving someone. I love Thomas, I really do, but he fucked up—he really flipping fucked up. Naomi fucked up worse, though, because I don’t look like Emily does, so—” She stops, because Katie’s face starts looking more and more balled up. “Sorry,” she then says, but it doesn’t fix Katie’s expression much.

“Naomi’s a fucking twat. I don’t want Emily to be—” Katie starts to say, and then sighs. “So, fine—she’s a massive lezza, and she just wants to ride around on her fucking scooter all day long and get girls to stare at her. Whatever. It’s not like—we ever had anything in common to begin with. But no—she doesn’t fancy just anyone, not someone sane, like—”

Panda looks at Katie curiously when the sentence trails off, and then Katie shakes her head and laughs shortly.

“She really shouldn’t be dating any of our former friends. We’re all fucking wankjobs, aren’t we.”

“I think some of us are getting better, maybe,” Panda mumbles after a moment, but she’s careful not to mention Ef again, because Katie’s a bit scary when she’s cross and nothing crosses her like Ef does.

“Yeah, well, Naomi fucking Campbell isn’t on whatever list you’re thinking of. I don’t understand it either, yeah? Why she’d pick her over us—why she’d go live with her, why she wouldn’t leave her even when—fuck,” Katie spits out, and then rubs at her face.

“It’s love. It’s like one of those bloody things at a fair where you’ve got to like, toss the rings—and you can never get them on the big prize, but you want it really bad, so you keep shoving fifty p’s at the man behind the counter, and he keeps giving you the rings, and then you try and try and try until you’re all out of tries. That’s what love’s like. I don’t think she can help it, Katie,” Panda says, and Katie reaches for her hand a moment later, squeezes it tightly.

“She can help wanting it so badly that she’s making herself look like a fucking wet blanket, can’t she?” Katie then responds, and her eyes drill into Freddie’s back as he skates up to the front of school.

The bell goes off.

“Think I’m going to skive off Politics today,” Panda tells Katie, who just laughs and says, “You’re not even actually taking it, Panda—who gives a shit?”

“Right, but,” Panda says, and then just gives up, because Katie’s started talking now, and when Katie’s talking she really can’t handle listening as well.

\----

She’s never been all that good at reading, but she’s trying, and Wikipedia is good because it doesn’t assume that she already knows things, like what the bleeding tits a “democratic republic” is, or why Thommo’s mum hates her so much, or why Daniel got sick here when really, they’ve got all sorts of things like urban furniture in England that they haven’t got in the democratic republic. [Thommo really likes bus shelters with seats, and says that they’re a sign of luxury that the British don’t appreciate—Panda thinks that the seats could be more comfortable, but hasn’t ever said.]

She’s learned loads. About the language (which is sometimes French, but sometimes not) and about the Belgians that used to live there and cocked everything up, and about the way they dance and the instruments they play, and it seems like a place that’s got a whole lot of home to it.

Thomas moved; a few days earlier, he told her in the hallway that he used some of his money from the club to buy a new house. He said it was very white, like a hospital wing.

“White’s nice,” Panda told him, despite the bees. “You can do anything with white.”

He hadn’t looked happy, and the more she learns about his democratic republic, the more she thinks she might understand something, after all.

The next thing she types in is “lungs”.

It gets harder, but she tries, because she’s got a whole hour, and nobody else bothers using the computers in the library, because the new head is right; Roundview is shit, and everyone in it is shit. Nobody cares about anything, except she’s reading about the democratic republic, and Emily is trying to do something that can’t be done.

It’s not much, but at least they’re trying.

\----

Effy and Naomi are chatting in the bathroom, and Effy’s now being this new Effy who actually has whole conversations, so when the door opens, Panda hears her say, “—and it’s going to take more than that.”

“I don’t know what else I can do, I mean, I let her stay; it makes me feel horrible, every single day I’ve got to look at her, because now she knows. She knows exactly just how—” and that’s when Naomi spots Panda, and her face constricts, like she swallowed a hairball.

“Just having a wee, don’t mind me—couldn’t bloody follow what you were saying anyway,” Panda says, and Effy laughs shortly before turning back to Naomi.

“You think there’s no consequences to anything you’re doing. That was true before you started giving a shit, Naomi, but it’ll never be that easy again.”

The door slams a few moments later, and then Effy’s head appears at the top of the stall; Panda flushes and says, “Oh, hi, Ef.”

“I’m giving relationship advice,” Effy says, in a serious tone of voice, and then that new Effy thing happens again where she laughs; she’s remembered how to, and now she does it loads, even when she’s not on drugs.

It’s a good change, and Panda says, “Well, you know loads, I think. More than I do, anyway.”

“About when they’re shit, and when they’re going to end,” Effy murmurs, before clambering off the toilet seat and then heading over to the sinks and washing her hands. Panda also does, but then takes out a sanitary wipe and uses that as well. After a moment of thinking about how to be a good friend, to this new Effy, she hands her one as well.

“But that’s what Naomi needs to know, innit?” she then asks, and Effy starts next to her. “About ending. Because—she ruined it. It’s just going to get worse. Emily won’t forget; Thommo didn’t, and even Cook and Freddie didn’t. Or well, maybe Freddie did…. I don’t know, Ef.”

Effy turns the taps off and dries her hand with a towel, slowly; she’s not looking up, and then she says, “Sometimes, people surprise you. I think Emily might,” but her voice comes out shaky, like she doesn’t believe a single flaming word that’s coming out of her mouth.

“Yeah,” Panda says, and follows her back out into the hallway.

\----

The scooter’s so orange and it’s got fluffy streamers on the handle bars; it looks like the bicycle Panda had when she was six, and before her mum went all mental about boys and boxes and things like that.

“I like it, you know. The scooter, and your helmet. Whizzer transport, Ems,” she says, uncertainly, when it’s clear that Emily isn’t going to stop sobbing anytime soon. But Emily’s some sort of magical creature who can pull herself together when she has to, and so the crying stops quickly, and then she wipes at her eyes—bloody completely mucked up her make-up—and looks at Panda.

“Hey, Panda,” she says, weakly, and thickly, like all those tears are stuck in her throat.

“I’m not very good, at giving advice,” Panda says, quickly. “But we all know, about Naomi being a flipping twat, or that’s what Katie says, anyway—dunno if I’d use those words…”

Emily snorts weakly and then runs a hand over her face again. She looks very young, and very lost; like Thomas when he first saw a cash machine, or how many pills most teenagers in Bristol do on a night out.

Panda pushes on. “But I wanted to say that, I know, about wanting to forget. And sometimes it helps me to—think about the things that make up the person I want to forget about, as small little things. Like how in Congo they speak French, but they have another language also, and sometimes Thomas sings songs in that other language to his brother and sister—and it’s nice. That’s what I think about, when I don’t want to think about the things that—well, you know, how he fucked some other girl because he didn’t talk to me.”

Emily glances at you, all watery, like she’s just now seeing you. “You know exactly how I feel, don’t you.”

“Well, not exactly,” Panda says and then sits down on the floor next to the scooter; Emily joins after a second. “Because nobody knows exactly what happened; you won’t tell Katie and Ef knows but says that Naomi should tell who she wants to, so—”

“She says I trapped her. That I—was in her space, too much. Wanting too much,” Emily reveals, and when her eyes well up again, Panda digs around in her purse and finds her one of those aloe Kleenexes that apparently are very good, for many things. Emily takes it, blows her nose, and then says, “So she did something to prove that she wasn’t trapped.”

“It’s not that simple, though, is it,” Panda says, after a moment, and picks at her socks. They don’t match, but that’s something that Thomas used to like about her, and it’s hard to let go of those things; some day, other people might like them too.

“She lied about it, for months. I flat out asked her, a few days before I found out, and she lied to my face. She lied about wanting to go away with me, she lied about it being okay for me to move in; she lied about everything.”

Panda stays silent, but after a moment she puts an arm around Emily’s back.

“I don’t know how to ever trust her again.” The crying starts all over a moment later, and Panda thinks about the songs that Thomas used to sing, and she doesn’t know the words—so she sings the tune, and random fruits that she can think of, until the song turns into “Banana, Banana, Orange, Grape, Apple, Pear, Apple, Pear” and Emily twists and hugs her more firmly.

That is how Naomi finds them, and Panda stares at her until she finishes the song. Then, she says, “Hi, Naomi—um, maybe you should—bugger off, for now” and watches as Naomi flinches, and then nods. Panda feels strangely powerful for a moment, like she’s done something important—the feeling swells when Naomi turns on her heels and leaves again.

Emily mumbles, “Thanks” into her shoulder.

“Love’s a right confusing thing, isn’t it,” Panda says in response, and watches as it starts to rain all around them. “I don’t understand how it can hurt so much, but it does—but then when it doesn’t…”

“Yeah,” Emily says, and then laughs shakily. “I haven’t got a brolly—do you?”

“It’s all right, I quite like the rain,” Panda tells her. “Feels like I’m home, in a proper pisser, you know?”

Emily doesn’t respond, and they sit together quietly, staring out into the distance, to where they know the people who have hurt them so are—but they’re hidden away behind the rain, and Panda feels like she can breathe; thinks maybe, Emily can, too.

It doesn’t rain in the Congo much, according to the internet, and something suddenly clicks; she wouldn’t much like suddenly living in a place without bus shelters with seats, where she didn’t understand what people were saying half the time, and where the sun burned her skin every day.

The next time she sees him, she’ll give him a hug. Maybe, that’s a start—but it’ll be a good thing to do even if it’s not a start.


	2. Freddie (Month 2)

JJ asks over and over, but he doesn’t go and see Cook when he's locked up. Effy says that it won’t help—and sometimes, when she’s not busy trying to fuck everything up worse, she’s absolutely right about everything.

It’s hard, being the uncertain one in a relationship with a girl who prior to this summer didn’t believe in anything. What a bath that must’ve been, Freddie thinks with a wry smile, skating to school. He spots her out front with Panda and Katie—and maybe it’s just residual guilt about how that all turned out that has him slip off his board and head around through the back entrance, but he knows that’s a lie, too.

He’s doing it for air, just to avoid her for a few moments; just to get a little bit of time to get used to the changes in her, every day, because time helps him cope with the fact that she sleeps in his shirts, halfway-unbuttoned and almost as form-fitting as her dresses; and the fact that she eats his toast, and talks to Karen about dancing, and his dad about life and politics and fuck knows what, all these things that he knows nothing about. She’s there all the time; if he’s honest, she mostly just goes home to check that her mum is still alive, but she’s absolutely in it now. His, his, his.

It’s not what he expected; it’s technically better—it’s not killing him to be with her, like he’d started to think it would do—but in other ways, he just don’t know what he’s doing at all.

Assembly will be quicker if he’s just a bit bonked, and it’s the combination of fumbling with his spliff and seeing Naomi sitting out on that winding staircase, with her new step-dad’s arm around her, murmuring low in her ear, that has him skate clumsily into the brick of the building. Another scrape, but that’s hardly a problem anymore, when Nurse Effy will bandage it up like a champ later tonight.

He doesn’t understand why his thoughts are so bitter, and sparks up to stop them—to make all of that go away, just like it made all the fucking bad rubbish with Cook go away last year. Then, he can’t help but watch.

Kieran’s technically a teacher, of course, but ever since Emily and Naomi threw that fucking beyond-awkward mid-afternoon party at their house a few weeks after they moved in together, Freddie hasn’t been able to think of him that way. Maybe Kieran hadn’t known, about what Naomi did—or maybe to him, it was one of those things that time would heal. Nobody else in the room had felt that way, and the camps set up almost automatically.

He had ended up sat with the cheaters, and then realized he could move over to the cheated-on as well, because he’d screwed Katie over (next to her sister, but with Panda and JJ firmly between them, who was probably only sat on that side of the room because he was terrified of Naomi) and then Effy had screwed him over, again, and again, and again.

Kieran had ended up being a fucking savior, when they’d all just stared at each other from opposite sides of the room, by talking about student revolts in the 1970s and how it was depressing that education was worse than ever but absolutely nobody could be bothered to give a shit. How, even when they’d start paying tuition fees themselves in a few months time, they wouldn’t get fuck-all in teaching hours, but everyone just put up with it.

“Mate, tuition fees? Fuck that; I’ve got a tip-top plan and it involves absolutely none of your educational bollocks,” Cook had laughed, but it had been subdued and put-on, with an arm around Naomi’s back that Emily couldn’t stop staring at. Like it meant something, other than that Cook liked to claim an army, just so he had people to throw in front of him when things exploded around him.

“Getting so many STDs that your dick falls off isn’t a plan so much as inevitable, Cookie,” Katie had cutely informed him from the other side of the room, and Freddie had tried not to laugh, but when Cook himself snorted before slowly raising two fingers at her and winking, it had proven irresistible.

“I care,” Emily had then said, abruptly, softly and seriously, when the room had got silent again. “About what I’m getting; how much I’m investing, and what my returns will be. And you’re right. We don’t get nearly enough back, with how much time we’re putting into learning, or how much—how much we’re giving.”

Naomi had shoved Cook’s arm off and had stormed out of the room, and nobody had made a single move to go after her, at which point Kieran had started rolling a fag and said, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but—McLair, you cheated on the other twin, did you not? And Cook, you slept with Elizabeth over here despite the fact that your best man was so in-fancy with her that he could barely walk down a corridor without running into a wall for staring at her all the time.”

Freddie had averted his eyes and felt his teeth clench, a little angrily, but Cook said, “Public property at that time, our Ef.”

“All right,” Kieran had said, agreeably, and had then lit his cigarette slowly. “So you’re not a cheater, then—just a fucking wanker who hospitalized a total stranger and got done in for it, but still more princely than Naomi, of course, because at least you didn’t cheat.”  Cook’s entire face had tightened, but Kieran had just looked pointedly at the blinking green light by his ankle, before glancing to the other side of the room again.  “Fair enough.  What about you, Pandora? If Naomi’s summary is anything to go by, you and your man are all square now.”

“Well, it’s not that easy, is it,” Panda had mumbled after a moment, and Katie slung an arm around her with a deadly glare towards Kieran. “I mean, I did it because I was stupid—and he did it to hurt me.”

“And what about you, JJ?” Kieran had asked, in the same mild voice that the entire conversation had taken place in. “Anyone ever cheat on you?”

“Well—no,” JJ had said, and then rubbed at his cheek and threw a careful glance at Emily. “Though technically speaking, I think Emily might have slept with me, as a one-time-charity-event, when she was already with Naomi—”

“I wasn’t,” Emily had responded, darkly.

“Is that why she spent two days crying about it after she found out? Because—you weren’t with her?” Kieran had asked, a little sharply.

“I wasn’t the one who didn’t want to be in a relationship back then, Kieran,” Emily had snapped back, in a shrill and high-pitched tone of voice that didn’t suit her one bit. “Maybe you should be talking to your daughter, about how she was scared then, and she’s scared now, and everything just fucking terrifies her, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, Emily, love—you’re so stuck on thinking that everything’s going to be exactly as you worked it out—”

Emily had stood up abruptly with clenched fists. “I’m not stupid—I knew what I was getting myself into, but she chose me, okay? She chose me, and I’m not stupid, or weak, for thinking that once she chose me, she would actually want to be with me. That she would talk to me, if something wasn’t right. That—”

“And did you talk to her, about Mexico?” Kieran had interjected, gently.

Nobody had moved or even dared to breathe, and then Emily had stormed out of the room as well.

“Right,” Kieran had offered after a long silence. “I think I may have overstayed my fucking welcome, so if someone can find where Naomi dumped our coats—”

Katie had been back with his jacket and scarf within moments, and Freddie had watched him go—only to go after him, at the last moment, ignoring Effy’s curious and slightly confused look on the way out.

“Hey—Kieran, mate,” he’d said, and Kieran had paused on the pavement. “Can I just—”

“Effy seems better, now. Not as intent on fucking everything up as she was last year,” he’d responded, and Freddie had felt something in his chest unravel horribly.

“So—why isn’t it easier?” he’d asked, quietly enough that nobody else would hear.

“Because it never is, McLair,” Kieran had said, with an ambiguous smile. “Now, I better head home, and convince Gina that Naomi’s moving out wasn’t just a fuck-you to her.”

Freddie had watched him go, and then Effy had shown up in the hallway. “Fred—we’re leaving. Naomi and Emily are—talking, and we shouldn’t be here.”

Katie had pushed past them both, mumbling, “Fucking Christ, can’t even proper be mad at someone who fucking deserves it—” and something about her, too, was so broken because of this.

Effy had watched him watch Katie, and then he’d sighed. “All right. Let’s go to the shed.”

“No Cook,” Effy had asked, and while that should’ve made him happy—it really had not.

\----

It’s strange, seeing Naomi cry. She yells a lot, and she manages to cut everyone in half with just a look (though not so much recently), but until this very moment, Freddie never considered that this might be hard on her, too.

Emily is destroyed over it, and he’s counting the days in his head until she pulls a runner; she’s almost being an Effy about it, where anyone who gets close to her in any way, Katie included, gets brushed off in a despairing kind of way, like, “Why are you trying?”

They’re still not talking to each other about their problems, it seems, and when Kieran spots him, he doesn’t bother hiding the spliff or anything; just holds it up and raises his eyebrows.

“Go on then,” Kieran says, with a sigh, and sits back while Naomi wipes her face on her sleeve.

Freddie sits down next to her and glances up warily. “Here,” he finally says, because he doesn’t want to ask if she’s all right; realizes on the spot that he hopes she’s really just fucking not, because he wasn’t when he messed Katie about, and she shouldn’t be now.

She inhales clumsily and then laughs, a little broken. “We’re the fucking leadership of tomorrow, aren’t we,” she says, shakily, and then passes the spliff to Kieran.

“If we can’t even sort ourselves out, we’re not leading anything,” Freddie murmurs, and doesn’t look at either of them again until he spliff is merely a roach, and he’s flicking it away.

“Freddie,” Naomi asks, when he rises and grabs his skateboard again.

“Yeah?”

“How—how did you forgive her?” she asks, and he feels himself stiffen, because it’s not truly the same thing, is it.

“We weren’t together. It’s not the same,” he says, pointedly, and Kieran dusts off his trousers and heads back into the building, telling them to just show up for first period.

“She hurt you, though. She hurt you just like I hurt…” The sentence trails off, like calling her by her name is asking for far too much already, and something about the look on her face seems familiar; it’s the one he saw in the mirror, for months on end, because of all of it.

“She wasn’t ready to be with anyone, and we tried to push her into choosing; when really, she just wanted to—be alone.”

Naomi glances up at those words, and then rubs at her face. “God. And how did she know she was ready?”

“Fuck if I know, Naomi; she abandoned me over the summer, I shagged seven girls in this fucking stupid competition with Cook, and ended up with Chlamydia,” he responds, and then laughs. “And then she comes back, and says that she was thinking about me—and after all this time, that’s so fucking much, to get without asking… Yeah.”

“Emily knows I love her,” Naomi sighs after a long moment of not saying anything. “It just doesn’t seem to be fixing anything.”

“s’not about love, Naomi,” Freddie says, and knows he’s got to talk to Effy, sooner rather than later. “Sometimes, it’s just really not.”

She follows him into the building, and moments later he’s cornered in the hallway by Katie.

“What the fuck, Freds?” she asks, angrily. “Why are you talking to her?”

“Because, Katie, she’s no different than me,” he says, and Katie’s hands fall back down, off his chest, until she purses her lips and says, “Of course she is, you fucking dicksuck; she actually loves my sister. You loved the girl you cheated on me with.”

“Yeah,” he says, because it’s true; he can't stop himself from looking at the spidery scar on her temple, either, even though Katie shrinks away from his eyes.

“So are you fucking happy, or what?” Katie then asks, sounding desperate to know, and he pricks through the angry tone of voice, and finds what she really needs to hear: that it was worth it, being tossed aside like that.

“Yes,” he says, with certainty he doesn’t feel. “I’m sorry, but it's always been her, hasn't it.”

Katie stalks off without another word, and he misses the bell altogether, watching her go.

\----

“How do I know that you won’t change your mind, about being ready?” he asks Effy that night, when she’s curled up on his chest, and they’re sharing a cigarette in his bedroom. It’s the same sheets that Katie preferred, though he doesn’t tell her that; just tugs them halfway up her back, until she sits up a little bit and stares at him with those uncanny, glass-like eyes.

“Ready for what?”

“This—us,” he says, awkwardly, and then just gestures at the entire room before handing her the fag.

She sucks on it deeply, and then stubs it out. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Effy, come on,” he says, and tangles his fingers in her hair; steady, steady, he thinks, and she relaxes after a moment, when it becomes clear that he’s not trying to pick a fight.

“You’ve let up,” she then says. “You no longer look at me like you want to get married tomorrow, or like—you know you’ll never love anyone the way you love me. You look at me like you’re seeing something real, and not just some fantasy of a girl that you don’t think you can have.”

“Yeah, well, the fantasy didn’t involve you fucking my best mate, or running off to Italy over the summer, without so much as a word,” he says, but it’s not really bitter; not anymore, and after a moment she chuckles.

“I’d say I was sorry, but I wasn’t at the time. It would make no difference, now.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” he lies, and hugs her in tighter.

“Fred,” she then says, in that desperately serious, predictive tone of voice she gets sometimes, and he braces himself for whatever is next. “Don’t go there.”

“Where—Italy?”

“No…” She trails off, and then starts over, staring him down like the ghost of who she was before the summer. “That place where you start to wonder—”

“Wonder what?” he asks, when she hangs onto the last bit of the sentence, denying him even that much knowledge—even though he’s sure he doesn’t want to know what she’s thinking, when she’s like this.

“Whether this is what you wanted, at all,” she finishes, and then kisses the conversation closed, before closing her eyes and falling asleep on his shoulder.

He lights another cigarette, and watches her sleep; thinks about investment and returns, and can’t even close his eyes for a moment, because he has no idea what his are anymore.


	3. Katie (Month 3)

She’s got two beds pushed together now. It felt just fine, that first night; she can’t even begin to count the number of times that she’s slept in that room by herself anyway, but now, with Emily’s posters torn down, it feels really fucking strange, to be on her own.

Their mum hasn’t been in the room since Emily left; she found her dad sitting there forlornly one morning, but then when hasn’t he been looking out of sorts lately? Hasn’t shaved in weeks, her dad, and nobody’s really minding James and his cross-dressing anymore either; even Katie’s given up on it for the most part, but she’s got two excuses, at least: Sam likes taking her places, and her mum likes her opinion—which is honestly the first time anyone’s given a legitimate shit about what she’s thought about anything, and that’s distracting enough, for the most part.

Still, there’s only so much time she can spend thinking about wedding dresses for WAGs and whether or not prawn-only canapés are likely to fucking upset the bread-sticks-and-dip crowd, and late at night, she sees the posters on her side of the room and they make her look stupid, really. Immature and superficial, and she isn’t either of those things—not anymore.

It’s unfair that she still looks stupid, when it's so clearly Emily who's cocking up her entire life.

\----

She runs into Naomi in the bathroom at college one day, and the first thing she thinks is that it’s shocking, that it hasn’t happened before now. The second, far-more bitter thought is that it’s probably Emily’s work; that she’s been shielding the stupid bitch even though she deserves nothing more than a right smack to the mouth.

“Katie,” Naomi has the guts to say, and Katie just stares at her disbelievingly for a moment and then looks away.

Naomi washes her hands and then sighs. “Fine; it’s not like Emily’s talking to me, much—why should you, right?”

Katie thinks for one minute that she’s actually going to lose it; that she’ll ram Naomi’s head into a mirror or just outright strangle her, but then that urge passes, and she ends up just grabbing her hand bag, and leaving.

Maybe Naomi wants someone to actually fucking hate her. Katie isn’t going to give her the satisfaction.

\----

There are things she wants to say to Emily, that she thinks someone should, but she honestly doesn’t know where to start; not when she tried, once, and Emily just said, “I thought you’d be happy—that she’s everything you thought she was. Isn’t it nice, being right?”

Her dad’s the only one who still talks to Emily, from time to time. Otherwise, she might as well be dead, for all the ways in which they don’t bring her up.

The six-seater table had, from one day to the next, only seated five, and after two weeks of that, her mum had removed the sixth chair and put it in the garage, right by all the gym equipment that also wasn’t being used anymore.

Katie thinks she might have cried, but they don’t talk about things like that—not when there’s weddings to be planned. Life moves on, even if Emily can’t fucking seem to.

\----

She watches from afar as Freddie slings an arm around Effy; the feeling that comes over her isn’t so much envy as just unbearable discomfort.

She could’ve been such a good girlfriend to him; not like Effy, who can barely clothe or feed herself, and who doesn’t really know how to give a shit about anything, except forgetting. She has so much experience, and it’s all going to Sam now, because at least he’s not a rude cunt like Naomi always was to their parents, and he’s not constantly high, and he listens, sometimes.

But fucking hell, she’d rather die than ever have anyone at college see them together, and that’s why she looks at Effy and Freddie still, and hates them both incredibly much.

“Picture fucking perfect, that,” Cook says, sitting down next to her and putting a hand on her thigh; he stretches his leg out and she can see his black electronic tagging thing, the one that means he finally got caught doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. “Loved up youth—innit something?”

“Heard you both got the fucking clap this summer,” Katie says, and pushes his hand off.  “You know—before you went to prison.”

“No secret there. Truth be told—bit sad you weren’t around, Katiekins. Always fancied a go, and why not make it count for something?” he tells her.

She absolutely hates that she’s flattered, even if it’s just a little bit, and she knows to ignore it.

“I’d rather fuck lice, thanks.”

“Ems says you’re shagging a real wanker these days,” Cook continues, almost conversationally. “Dwarf, almost, if he’s littler than you are. Says he made Freds look like a real fucking thoroughbred, which—don’t get me wrong, he’s my boy and I love him to death, yeah, but my fucking ten year old brother could probably take him in a fight.”

She sees red. “Emily said? Emily who—fucking stayed with that cheating, lying cunt, has something to say about my taste in partners?”

“Oy, it was just—whatever, we were just taking the piss,” Cook says, a little perturbed.

“And when was this?” she asks, even more shortly. “Because fucking darling Emily hasn’t seen me, or my fucking boyfriend, or anything to do with either of us in over two months.”

“Katiekins—don’t fucking knuckle down the messenger, yeah?” Cook asks, and then slings an arm around her shoulder.

She shoves it off. “Fuck off; and don’t call me that.”

She bumps into her sister in the hallway, waiting by Naomi’s locker like the fucking half-slave that she’s become.

“Katie…” she tries, softly.

Katie shakes her head; keeps going, and calls Sam, who comes to get her and takes her out for coffee.

“You should talk to her,” he suggests, and it’s about the first non arse-kissy thing he’s said about any of her family, when she stays silent throughout their half-date. “Your sister. I mean, it’s clear even to me that you miss her, and we both know what I am to you—so why not just acknowledge that she’s hurting you, and sort it out?”

“Drink your fucking coffee, Sam,” she tells him, and keeps looking at the cloud of foam on her own cappuccino, until it’s clear that he’s still listening to her when nobody else bothers, and that she really couldn’t do much better, so it’s real shit, absolute shit that she still feels she needs to.

\----

Her dad starts sleeping on the couch about two months after Emily moves out. It’s the middle of November, and nobody’s doing a damn thing about Christmas; Mum’s almost married to the shop now, and Katie just hovers between them all, not able to make anything better.

“I know you miss Ems, but I’m here, yeah?” she tells her dad one morning over toast, and he looks at her and smiles faintly.

“You’ve always been your mother’s, Katie—I don’t begrudge either of you that, but it’s true all the same.”

“Yeah, well—maybe I’m sick of that, of just being on one side of things,” she responds, and pours him a glass of juice; shoves it towards him. “Maybe I am tired of being the only one who gives a shit about all of you, yeah?”

“Don’t swear, love,” her dad responds, and then looks at the empty bar stool next to her, where Emily wouldn’t have been sat anyway, as it’s not like she was ever around to have breakfast with them.

Her dad drinks the juice, though, and that’s just about enough to keep her at it, to keep her working hard enough for all five of them—to keep them at being a family.

\----

Emily opens the door in a robe that the fucking Salvation Army wouldn’t fucking donate, and Katie’s fingers itch to just tear it off her and fix her right up, until she’s back to being at least something resembling a fucking person.

“Hi,” Emily says, and then opens the door further. “Come in. I’ll make us some tea.”

They’re like fucking strangers, and it’s ridiculous, how Katie actually feels the need to check that the she-bitch isn’t lurking around the corner somewhere, waiting to pounce—like she’s actually some sort of homicidal psycho, and not just a manipulative, selfish cow, who somehow has sapped Emily from her entire ability to stand on her own two feet.

“Two sugars, right?” Emily asks, without turning around, and that’s when Katie does lose it.

“Are you fucking serious?”

Emily doesn’t respond, and so Katie gets up and grabs her by the shoulder, shoves her against the counter. “Tell me; are you fucking having me on, or do you actually need to ask me how much sugar I like in my fucking tea after living with me for seventeen years?”

The words lisp out horribly, and if not for the fact that they do have seventeen years between them, Emily probably wouldn’t even understand them; she’s so angry that she’s almost choking on them.

“It’s been a while,” Emily just says, stupidly, and so dead-sounding that it just makes Katie angrier. “I’ve—had a lot on my mind, okay?”

“Yeah; like, how our parents are this close to a fucking divorce, or how James hasn’t actually been to school in two weeks, or how dad doesn’t sleep and mum doesn’t know how to do anything without first having a ‘a quick little drink’ soon. Right? Is that what’s been on your mind?”

Emily looks stunned, and then deflates again a moment later, clutching her mug to her chest. “Katie, it’s—I’m sorry, okay, but things with Naomi—”

“Yeah. Things with Naomi,” Katie repeats, and turns away; but then something finally breaks, that’s had a tenuous hold on her ever since Effy fucking Stonem hit her in the head with a rock, and she slaps the mug out of Emily’s hand. It splinters on the wall, and Emily stares at it with that same vacant expression until Katie slaps her, too. “You selfish fucking cow. You don’t give a shit about anyone but her, and guess what, Emily—you’re wasting your fucking time. She’s never going to care about you that way. And you can’t fucking make her.”

“You don’t know that,” Emily responds, slowly, and then stares up with incredibly wounded eyes. “You don’t know her.”

“Don’t I?” Katie says, before taking a step back and digging her nails into her thighs. “Don’t I know exactly what she’s like? Using you, when it suits her—fucking you over when that suits her better, when there’s something else that she wants more… yeah, Ems, I have no fucking idea what that’s like.”

Emily’s got that ridiculously defiant look in her eyes, and Katie wonders if Naomi’s ever seen it—just how much is there, and how much Emily is capable of if pushed far enough. It probably means that Naomi can’t push her buttons in the same way, and that is the first thought she’s had in months that has given her hope that her sister will find a way out of this mess.

“She’s not Freddie,” Emily tells her, very deliberately. “She’s not like that; there isn’t anyone else, and I know that she loves me, so—”

“Oh, yeah, she’s gone out of her way to show it to you, hasn’t she,” Katie spits out, and when Emily’s eyes lower, she knows she’s tapped into the worst fear in all of this. “All she knows is that she doesn’t want to be alone, not unless it’s her choice, and you’re just fucking letting her get away with it.”

“And how do you know what I do and don’t feel, Katie?” Naomi asks, very calmly, but when Katie turns around, her eyes are bloodshot and her entire frame is shaking. “Expert, are you? On being in love?”

“No,” Katie says, and picks up her bag from where she dropped it on the floor, just to finally hit something, because that urge has been undeniable for weeks now. She glances at Emily one last time, and then says, softly, “Nobody hits me in the head with a rock, right?”

Naomi isn’t spared a second glance, and then she’s out on the street, fighting for breath. She cries on the walk home, but she pulls it together before she gets in, and then puts a mark on the calendar for when things will start to change.

They’ve simply got to.

\----

Sam comes over for dinner on the weekend, and when he compliments the fucking aubergine-cucumber soup like it’s won a fucking Michelin Star, Katie just reaches for his hand under the table and squeezes it.

“What?” he asks, quietly, even as James is being berated about wearing a fucking sparkly, sequined headband to the dinner table—and Katie feels her chest ease up at the fact that someone has finally fucking noticed that things were getting out of hand.

“Nothing—just—” she starts to say, but pauses and holds up her hand a second later

The front door slams shut, and she exhales and looks at her mum. “Don’t say anything.”

“Katie—”

“Just don’t, okay? Just for tonight,” she repeats, and holds Sam’s hand as her dad get Emily’s chair back from storage.


	4. Naomi (Month 4)

She tried.

She can’t exactly say when she started trying, not at the risk of lying horribly to herself, but she knows that in the past few months, she’s given it everything she had. That, as it turns out, isn’t a whole lot. She doesn’t know much about cooking—that’s Emily. She doesn’t know much about romantic surprises, either; the last thing she’d gotten Emily was just a bunch of wild flowers, ones that she’d intended to mean “I thought about you randomly; I do sometimes” and that had been received with an icy, “Did you sell drugs to your other girlfriend to buy me these, too?”

People underestimated Emily. The greater the distance between them, the more Naomi had felt like she’d been trying to fix an insurmountable problem with a person that she hardly knew, and it dragged on; they would fall asleep on opposite sides of the bed without even looking at each other as a stay of execution.

“Fuck it,” she says out loud, because she hates people who pity themselves when they don’t get what they want: people like Katie Fitch, who still can’t handle that she wasn’t Freddie’s first choice; people like Panda, too bloody dense to realize that all of it, her and Thomas breaking up, is still about all the times she fucked Cook and didn’t feel the sting of it all.

Naomi had felt the sting, that one night. It had been driven home with Sophia’s soft, “I won’t tell her; your girlfriend, I mean”, and it had been echoed in the look of horror on her own face.

“Are you—do you know Emily?” she’d asked, which of course had been the wrong question, because even then the most suffocating fear of all was that of being found out, for the weak, fraudulent, absolutely-undeserving mess that she was.

Sophia had smiled and pulled her hair back into a ponytail; it had swished behind her like the pendulum on a metronome, moments later, as she got her bag and said, “Everyone knows about you two, after the Love Ball.”

“Right,” Naomi had said, thickly, and had rolled over onto her other side. “I didn’t think you would, I mean. Tell her.”

Sophia had left without saying anything else, and the sheets had smelled foreign, like a soap product that neither she nor Emily ever used.

Naomi wishes she could say that she hadn’t slept a wink, but she’d slept soundly, every night for the rest of the summer, because she’d got away with it. The rush of that power outweighed the guilt, and of course it had, Effy had said just two weeks ago. “It always feels good, to know that you’re the only person who fully controls a situation.”

“That’s not normal, though, to want that. That badly,” she’d countered, and Effy had shrugged.

“Stop wanting it, then, if it bothers you so much. I did.”

Nothing is that simple, Naomi knows, now that she’s sat on her bed by herself and every trace of Emily has been stripped from their house. Ours, she thinks, and feels indescribably small, in the white-walled bedroom that, without Emily, just doesn’t have any character at all.

\----

What Emily doesn’t know doesn’t hurt her, is what Naomi had learned that night on the roof, and it’s why she had gone downstairs and around the building—after Emily left, and after her tears had dried—and had picked up the sketch book. It had to still be something; it had to be more than just the end of someone’s life, lying on the pavement, ignored and forgotten.

She had kept it tucked under her socks, in a place that she doubted Emily would look even if they were married, doing each other’s laundry—and things hadn’t gotten to that point, and with the way the silence had started stretching between them, she doubted they ever would.

It’s her specialty, doubting, Emily had told her one night, chopping up a red pepper, and something in Naomi had quit at all the resentment; something just checked out altogether, and she had gone to watch Eastenders and the Channel 4 news, leaving Emily to have her part of the house.

They had lived like strangers after that, until it ended.

\----

Four days after Emily’s left, she’s finally visiting their home again. She has run from yet another home, because her mum’s hugs have started feeling too attached, and Kieran’s pitying looks just make her want to claw his face apart.

She takes the sketch book out, and goes through it for the first time, pausing on drawings of herself that she hardly recognizes, until she remembers that these aren’t her own eyes, that she’s looking through.

Sophia wasn’t talented, but she was all heart, and it shows in the pictures.

They have that in common, Naomi thinks, and leaves the book out on her nightstand, because it’s not like Emily will ever see it now, and maybe this will be a reminder of how much she threw away.

Maybe she can stop throwing, if the consequences are out in plain sight.

\----

Three days after that, she wakes up angry. It’s been a whole week, and she’s angry, which is a comfortable feeling; it settles in her skin and sets her synapses firing, and of course she’s angry, because she tried, she honestly tried, and still she’s never allowed to fuck up. Not when she’s with Emily; perfect, wonderful Emily, who was ready to get married before she was even born, and who never flails about spastically in trying to do the right thing, and who never doubts. Never, ever doubts.

She glances at the sketch book first thing, when the anger roils through her gut, and then rolls over and goes back to bed.

Fuck it, she thinks. Just fuck it.

\----

Effy comes to find her, when she hasn’t been to college in a few days.

“What’s this, then?” she asks on the front steps, gesturing at Naomi’s boxer shorts and her vest top.

Naomi just shrugs.

“I came to get you,” Effy says, with a lot of determination in her voice.

“I’m not going in.”

“She’s five foot tall, if even that; what are you so scared of, Naomi?” Effy asks, plainly, and when Naomi’s hand shoots out unexpectedly—she’s had too much to drink, already, and it’s not even ten am—Effy catches it easily nonetheless.

“I’m not afraid. I’m not fucking afraid,” she slurs, and doesn’t append the ‘not anymore’ that would make this all understandable.

“Get inside. I’m making you coffee,” Effy says.

Twenty minutes later Cook shows up, and Effy shrugs. “Don’t know how to fucking work a real coffee maker, with filters; figure he might.”

If Naomi gave a shit, she’d ask why him; why not Freddie, but maybe she’s so far gone that she’s earned the disaster twins by now.

Cook gives her a hug, and into his neck she mumbles, “Emily wanted an espresso maker.”

“Emily got one, didn’t she,” he responds, harmlessly, and she feels the sting of angry tears in her eyes all over again.

\----

They drink coffee together for two hours, during which Effy settles on the one-seater and pulls her legs up to her chest, almost defensively, and Cook props his feet up on the coffee table. Naomi almost says something about it, but the only person who would give a shit about his feet doesn’t live in the house anymore, and instead she sips at her coffee and starts to slowly feel more awake.

“Sod this, then,” Cook says, a moment later, and climbs over the back of the sofa, feeling around down there until Naomi’s almost looking down his pants, and then comes back up with a bottle of tequila.

“What the fuck?” she asks, already feeling like she’s going to laugh.

“Left it here at that party. Remember the party, ladies?” Cook asks, and twists the cap off and takes a hearty sip. “They fucking branded us then, didn’t they. Fucking branded us, like what we once were is all we’ll ever be.”

Effy doesn’t respond, beyond picking at a ladder in her tights, and Naomi reaches for the bottle after a moment.

“So what actually happened?” Effy asks.

“I slept with someone else,” Naomi repeats, for the twentieth time at least, and it’s coming out dull now, even though her tongue prickles and her mind fires blanks, for the first time in days.

“No, not there. Why did she finally leave?”

Naomi shrugs and puts the bottle on the table—shoves it towards Effy, and watches as it almost tips over, but she rescues it gracefully. “Katie came over. Said a few things, I didn’t get what they were, and then Emily finally cried about everything, at how fucked up things were; shoved at me, she did, and then said that she couldn’t ever forget about it, no matter how things I promised to do, because I already did the one thing that mattered.”

Cook crosses his legs and folds his hands behind his head. “So fuck her, then. Can’t try more than trying, can you? I mean, I love that girl, but you’re not a princess, and if she wants the fucking fairytale—well, our Ef knows about how to get that, doesn’t she. Trading up and all that.”

“Fuck you,” Effy says, mildly, and caps the bottle again; tosses it back towards him, and he catches it easily, with a wink.

Naomi can almost feel the tension thread between them, and wonders if this is what she and Emily looked like; but of course not, because Cook will never admit to being broken down by Effy, and Effy will never admit to having broken him down, either.

“Where’s Freddie?” she then asks, and Cook takes another sip from the bottle.

Effy shrugs. “At college. Where he should be.”

“They’re friends now, you know,” Naomi says, and laughs a little helplessly. “Emily and Freds. Bonding over how fucking horrible we are, I’m sure.”

“Freddie’s over it,” Effy says, but Cook starts laughing and then hands Naomi the bottle.

“Freddie will never be over it, sweetheart; but you knew that, didn’t you? And you wanted to feel a little bit punished, at first. Now, it’s starting to grate, isn’t it—that no matter how lovely the new you is, it’s never going to be enough for Freddie; not now. Not with you.”

Naomi looks at the bottle and thinks about Mexico, and then, before she can even tell she’s going to do it, flings it across the room until it shatters.

“Fuck them,” she says, with clarity she doesn’t feel, and Cook slings an arm around her.

Effy sighs and gets up. “This isn’t you.”

“Just because it’s not you anymore,” Naomi says, without looking at her, and Effy leaves a moment later.

Cook’s arm falls away limply.

“It hurts, doesn’t it; pretending she doesn’t get to you,” Naomi tells him, and when he kisses her a moment later, it’s angry and it stings, and it feels exactly like what she needs from him.

\----

The anger is gone, a few hours later, when she can see the lines she pulled into Cook’s back, and the way he’s bruised around the shoulders, around the waist. He’s clicked on a lamp and after a moment of looking at her, pulls his shirt back on.

“And how are you going to use this against me?” she asks him, flatly.

“Fuck you, Blondie; I don’t kiss and tell,” he says, immediately furious, and Naomi sits up and picks up her bra and looks at it for the first time; it’s not even hers, it’s Emily’s, and she drops it like it’s burning.

“That what you promised Panda, too?”

His hands are at her shoulders, pushing her back into the couch, and she’s never seen him this out of sorts.

“That was different; she owed someone something, and was going around like she was so much fucking better than me. You and me, babe? We don’t owe anybody, anything.”

He looks like he’s almost ready to believe it, almost—and then his eyes fall and she knows it for the biggest lie he’s ever told. It’s bigger than her best ones, even, and she crushes him into a hug a moment later and starts crying.

He says nothing, but stays steady, and doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know exactly how she feels.

\----

“I said I’d do anything. But there’s nothing to do, is there?” she asks, later that night, when they’re having a fag on the porch. Cook’s shrugged his jacket back on, is pulling the collar up, and he passes her the fag with a shrug.

“I don’t understand women. How to fuck them, get them to flail about like they’re being tortured—yeah, I’ve got that down,” he tells her, without any pride, and then adds—with a boyish smile that makes him seem young, for the first time in ages, “but you’ve got that part covered too, haven’t you.”

She doesn’t respond, just hands back the cigarette after a deep drag, and he lets it dangle from his lips, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Maybe you should talk to her sister,” he then says, around the fag, and she thinks she’s misheard him in the first instance—but when he doesn’t budge, and her eyes are nearly falling out of her skull, she starts laughing.

“Katie? Who’s probably having a fucking party themed ‘Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead’ right now?”

Cook pulls a bit of tobacco off his tongue and then shrugs again. “Think you’ve got that one wrong, Naomi. Having Emily back when Emily’s not all there, not even a fucking bit there—that’s not doing anyone any good.”

“Yeah, well,” Naomi responds, and then just leans against the door to their house. Her house—their house; the phrases spin around and blend together, until she grips the door and everything steadies again.

Cook looks at her unsurely, and then tosses the end of the fag into their neighbor’s front yard, and with two long strides, he’s hugging her again.

“ You were the ones with promise, you know,” he says, softly and honestly, and she thinks that nobody’s ever seen more of Cook than she has in the past twelve hours; of what lies underneath the surface there, and she strokes his hair down and fixes his collar and says, “Not just us, Cook; not just us.”

He walks off without saying anything else, and she watches him go, before heading back inside.

The living room is a mess, and she cleans it until it’s ready; until she’s sure that, should hell suddenly freeze over, she wouldn’t be letting Emily down all over again.

Look at what I can do, sometimes, she thinks, drunk and tired, and then falls asleep on Emily’s pillow.

\----

She wakes up when Effy calls her, and tells her that Cook’s violated the terms of his probation—”Apparently he didn’t make it back before seven,” Effy says, without questions or comments, and Naomi is almost relieved that she hasn’t changed that much, after all—and is going back to prison. 

When Effy hangs up, Naomi spends a long time sitting in the kitchen and staring at the espresso maker, until birds start chirping in the back yard and she knows she won’t fall asleep again.

\----

Around eight thirty, she puts on an old blazer, and an old skirt, and gets out her old bag. The walk to Roundview is crisp, and it hurts her nose to breathe in the air, but she does; nothing to dull the sting this time, she thinks, and she walks up to college at the exact same time that a little orange scooter pulls up around the corner.

Emily’s not wearing the safety goggles, and Naomi takes a deep breath and tries to not let that hurt; tries to not let on that it does hurt, because she understands why Emily can’t even bear to look at them anymore.

They stare at each other from across the courtyard, and then Emily averts her eyes and heads inside. Naomi watches her go for a moment, and then takes a deep breath and heads over to where Panda and Katie are sitting, and tries—just this once—to not immediately push the wrong buttons.

“Hi, Panda,” she says, and Panda looks absolutely amazed at being addressed, before her face falls again, because she’s an Emily in all of this, and she’s looking at the cause of all her betrayal—but Naomi steels herself, and focuses on Katie. “Can we talk?”

“I’ve got nothing to say to—” Katie starts to say, before getting up, and Naomi knows that in two more seconds, she’ll be flattened.

“Katie—please,” she then says, softly, holding out her palms until they’re almost touching Katie’s shoulders.

Nobody moves, for a long moment, and then Katie’s chin lifts and Naomi almost recoils at the look on her face; it’s what she imagines she looks like, when she looked at Emily during that summer full of lies, but underneath it all is all the sadness in the world—and she wonders what life at the Fitch house is like, now; if the space that Emily occupies is every bit as empty as the space that Emily left.

“I’ll come to yours, after school,” Katie finally says, almost inaudibly, sounding absolutely defeated.

Naomi doesn’t nod, doesn’t look back at Panda; just turns around, walks steadily, and enters the building—another necessary evil, she thinks, and lets her lungs fill with air.


	5. JJ (Month 5)

For two weeks, he saw stars—everywhere, like little dots on the line of his vision, following him everywhere he went. He read about it—dismissed the idea that he was having some sort of retinal detachment, though it would be medically possible, and instead lay on his back and watched stars swirl over his ceiling.

“This is what drugs are like, isn’t it,” he'd asked Freddie, who just shrugged and said, “When they’re good, maybe; hallucinogens are a bit, yeah.”

Effy had looked away at the question, and JJ had thought about parties in the woods and her randomly-found mushrooms that had fucked everything up, and his brain had drawn a little connect-the-dots from that moment to Cook’s sentencing, four days in the future at the time.

It is now almost two months in the past, and his eye has healed. Freddie has almost given up on being angry about everything, and Effy visits Cook sometimes—JJ knows because he’d run into her on the way out, and for a second she looked like she was going to deny it, but then she just said, “He needs his mates, doesn’t he.”

Effy’s rather clever when she’s not trying to be deliberately stupid, and JJ wishes that he didn’t find that very attractive, but he does.

\----

Naomi corners him in the hallway one day, and he starts stammering before he can figure out what else to do.

“Stop being so afraid of me,” she tells him, urgently and sternly, and his eyes blink and close and open again, and then he nods—but she’s not really going about it well, is she, when he’s more terrified of her now than he ever was before. “It wasn’t you, okay? You didn’t know she—well, it doesn’t matter.”

“Okay,” JJ responds, as calmly as he can, and then he blinks twice more.

Naomi bursts into tears in front of him, and it takes him a full minute to gather up the courage to put an arm at the small of her back.

“There, there,” he then says, because it’s what his mum would’ve done, and if anything he doesn’t want to be a twat like he was around Panda, when that thing with Thomas happened. He just doesn’t want to be a twat, for once, and so he keeps his hand steady (even though it shakes) and says, “There, there” a few more times, until Naomi starts to laugh and cry at the same time.

“Fuck’s sake,” she then says, looking at him and wiping her sleeve past her nose. “Everything’s so fucked up, isn’t it; I’m talking to Katie and not to Emily, and now you’re here…”

“I’ve thought about this,” JJ says, when it looks like she needs him to say something. “And honestly—sometimes, people say that things meant nothing just as an excuse, but I think that when Emily—um, well, when, uh—”

“JJ,” Naomi says, rolling her eyes.

He nods and clears his throat. “Well, from a biological perspective, assuming that she is, in fact, a lesbian—and she seemed rather determined, but you would probably know better than I do—then um, biologically, she could not have enjoyed it? Which does not mean that—” He stops and rubs at his forehead. “I didn’t mean to say that it was bad for her, but it was—”

“JJ, stop,” Naomi says, and clasps his shoulder, before sniffling once more and then pulling her face back on; it’s literally like that, he thinks—like she can just block out the world and pull inwards, and everything becomes okay, just for a minute at a time. “I fucked someone else, when we were actually together—that’s all I meant. I’m not in a position to judge.”

She starts walking off after that, and he pulls on her sleeve after a moment with a frown. “What do you mean?”

“I just mean that I cocked up so much worse than—well, it’s not the same, is it?” she stumbles, and looks at him with something close to shame.

“Why?” he asks.

“Because—I’m just—I wish she hadn’t slept with you but we weren’t together then, it’s just different,” she then says, impatiently, like she’s somehow remembered he’s slow about all of these things.

“Yes, but, Naomi—just because what she did was a little wrong, and what you did was a lot wrong, doesn’t mean they’re not both wrong. Think about—” He stops talking, before he says something about Effy that he doesn’t mean, and then just bites on his lip a few times. “It doesn’t work like that. Mathematically, I mean; they’re not two constants that cancel each other out, are they.”

Naomi just sighs and walks away after that, and JJ watches her go.

“All right?” Freddie asks behind him, and slings an arm around his shoulder.

“I’m going to go visit Cook,” JJ says, and looks at him pointedly. “You should come.”

“Jay…” Freddie starts, letting his arm fall away, and JJ shakes his head.

“Two wrongs, Freds. It doesn’t work like that. He loved her too, you know.”

Freddie looks away and his cheeks do that thing that they do when he’s angry, squeeze in and out like a pneumatic valve, and JJ is ready to give up on it once more, but then Effy comes around the corner and starts walking toward him, and just like that, Freddie says, “Yeah, all right. All right, then. After college, okay?”

JJ nods, and wishes he was still friends with Emily, even a little—he’s been asking for loads of stuff lately, and it seems to finally be working out for him, a bit at a time.

\----

They run into the twins outside of the detention centre.

“Looking for a new boyfriend, then?” Katie asks Effy, not without malice; but Effy just rolls her eyes and heads into the building. JJ watches as Freddie watches her go, and something about his expression says that maybe, it’s not okay that the people at reception greet her by her first name, and hand her a badge quickly, and that she knows exactly where to go.

Emily watches that happen, too, and steps forward without prompting and gives Freddie a hug.

Katie’s eyes nearly fall out of her head, and then she says, “Ems, what the fuck” in a voice that sounds incredibly betrayed.

“I know you’re sorry,” Emily says, softly, but JJ hears it and watches Katie’s face. “And you don’t deserve—that.”

“There’s nothing there,” Freddie responds, flatly, but then gently pushes Emily back anyway, and Emily sighs and says, “I hope so, for your sake, Freds” before walking off.

“How is he?” Freddie then asks Katie, who’s still stood there, like she has no idea what else to do after what just happened. JJ feels sorry for her, for a moment, but then Katie’s face shuts off from them and she just shrugs.

“Alive; as big a twat as ever. Not learning his lesson in there, I don’t think,” she says, and then glances at JJ. “Asked about your eye, though.”

“It’s better,” JJ says, and almost reaches for Freddie’s hand, but he’s not five anymore, and he’s not actually afraid of Katie. Nobody is, not after seeing how quickly she went down, with just one moment near Effy.

“Is it?” Katie asks, and looks at Emily, waiting by the bus stop with her arms folded around herself.

JJ thinks she looks like the Scarecrow, weaving in the wind aimlessly, like she could be blown away any minute. But the Scarecrow didn’t have brains, and really, what Emily needs is either courage or a heart—he honestly doesn’t know anymore.

“We better go,” Freddie tells Katie, and Katie just makes a face and then heads over to where Emily is, with a determined clip in her heels.

“She’s never going to stop hating me, mate,” Freddie says, when they’re being patted down, and JJ thinks about how that works, before looking at Freddie seriously.

“She’s got to; if she’s not ever going to stop hating you, how are you ever going to stop hating Cook?”

Freddie has no answers, and when Cook and Effy are laughing at a table already, JJ can feel clocks ticking inside of his head.

\----

Emily visits his home, a few days later.

“I need a friend—someone who isn’t Katie,” she says, in way of explanation, and JJ does some simple math in his head before deciding that perhaps he does still owe her that much.

They watch a documentary about stingrays together; the shapes fit into JJ’s head comfortably, and Emily says she likes the colors of the ocean.

Emily curls into a small corner on the sofa, and JJ remembers her in his purple sweater, with the sleeves almost dipping into her tea every time she picked it up. He remembers making her laugh, and how his mum hugged him after she left, and how good everything felt, just for a while—and something inside of him suddenly is furious with her, for leaving him to explain to his mum how this girl that had randomly shown up at breakfast was now never going to stop by again—how he couldn’t even say that they were just friends, because friends were people who talked to you, at least some of the time, and Emily had just avoided him for ages.

“You told me to ask for things, remember? Well, okay, so—I’m doing that. I’m telling you what I want,” he says, abruptly, and Emily jumps, as if she’d forgotten he was there. “I’m not like my friends, like Freddie or Cook. I don’t—just shag girls, regardless of who they are, to stop thinking, because my mind doesn’t work like that; even when I’m shagging, actually, I am constantly thinking about other things, like what it will be like to go to uni without Cook and Freddie, and whether or not they will ever revisit my diagnosis now that I’m doing better, or even—even just what I’ll be learning in class tomorrow, and if English literature will ever make sense to me.”

Emily doesn’t respond, and he puts down his mug on the coffee table in front of them, and then clicks off the telly.

“I’m not just—out to shag, not like they are, which means that—when we shagged, it was because you insisted that it happen, and you made it seem like it would be okay, if we did. I didn’t ask for that, not from you; you said we ought to, and I said okay. I agreed to a one-time only, charity event, but there were—hidden clauses there, weren’t there, about how if I did this, if I said yes to that, we would never be friends again—because you had secrets, and you shouldn’t have done it. You—you’re the one who shouldn’t have done it, Emily—you shouldn’t have fucking done it when you were in fucking love with someone else.”

He doesn’t realize that he’s shouting until she’s recoiling away from him, and then she looks at him with watery eyes and says, “I didn’t mean for us to stop being friends.”

His hands are shaking but his brain feels solid, like Cook punched in some connectors and now he can think clearly—for now, at least, and he clings to it—pulls it into reach, and keeps talking. “Cook probably didn’t mean for him and Freddie to stop being friends either, and I’m sure Naomi—well, she does love you, but sometimes it’s not just about what we want, or is it? Because I—want to be normal, more normal than this, and I want to have a girlfriend—or at least sex with someone who doesn’t first pity me, and then hate me, which you do, at least sometimes, because of how it made Naomi feel.”

Emily doesn’t look like she has any tears left to cry, but there’s still something there, behind her eyes, and he feels abruptly ashamed when he sees it. The “sorry” slips from his lips, and then he feels the connectors sever, almost physically—and then he’s locked on—and the rocking starts, doesn’t stop. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m fucking sorry that we shagged and that Naomi found out and that I told Freddie and that she cheated and that he cheated and that everyone fucking—fucking set of worthless, useless fucking cheaters—”

Emily’s hand settles at the small of his back, and she rubs it up and down and says, “It’s okay; you’re right, you know. I’m not sorry that we had sex, but it’s just difficult, and I’ve been a horrible friend to you.”

“Mango juice,” he says, trying to breathe, and Emily gets up off the sofa and pours him a glass of it, presses it into his hand.

He drinks it slowly and feels his heart slow down and his head clear—like the stars are fading from his eyes, all over again—and then it’s just them, again, like it was that night outside of the club. Emily looks broken, and he wishes he had a jumper to put around her back.

“I don’t fancy you, you know—I like your breasts, they’re wonderful, of course, but I don’t fancy you the way that Naomi does,” he tells her, instead. “Even Naomi knows that. But I would like at least one friend that isn’t—just—locked onto Effy, all the time.”

“Sorry your mates are tossers,” Emily says, after a moment, and JJ finishes the rest of the mango juice and feels some laughter come up.

“Sorry that Naomi is one, too,” he tells her. “But—if you must know—”

“Please don’t, JJ,” she tells him, with a very sad expression. “She doesn’t need—I just don’t want to hear it.”

“I’m quite good at not saying things—well, no, I’m not really, actually, but I’ll try, okay?” he promises, and when she puts her head on his shoulder, a moment later, he feels pretty good about how this went.

“Asking for stuff’s all right, isn’t it,” Emily says, and he thinks about it for a moment.

“You just have to know what to ask for,” he says, because it’s the one thing he’s learned since last year. “Asking for little things is better; big things, people have got to offer themselves, I think.”

“Yeah,” Emily agrees, and reaches for the remote again. “And what if they don’t?”

“Well, it’s like—building blocks, isn’t it. Lots of little things can make a big thing,” he suggests.

Emily looks pensive but then smiles faintly and says, “That’s fairly clever”, and he says, “Well, yes, I am fairly clever”—and then they both laugh, watching the stingrays flutter away on the screen like giant planes and vectors, swooping across space and time.


	6. Thomas (Month 6)

It is cold.

No matter how many layers he wears, or how tightly he buttons up his coat, or how high they turn up the heat--now that they can afford it--Thomas never stops thinking that it is cold, in England. It is a soulless, empty cold, and every thing he does lacks the warmth that reminds him of home.

He goes to work, early now; spends time learning about how to play music, how to control all the buttons on the DJ's console, and how to mix songs together. He convinces himself that he is learning things, but every day he passes Roundview on his way to the club, and he realizes that he's not learning anything that matters.

He sees Panda, sometimes, from afar. It has been many months, but finally, last week she raised her hand in greeting, before Katie Fitch grabbed it and pulled it down.

He had not waved back, but he had put her wave inside of him; kept it safe. It has kept him going for seven days now.

\----

Daniel's lungs are getting better.

Thomas watches him in the morning, when Fumi has gone to school and his mother has gone to work (she is a secretary now, and wears outfits that say nothing of her beliefs, nothing of her as a person; she dresses English, and he can see her unhappiness growing with every day), and it is February by the time that Daniel gets some color back.

“You look almost white,” Thomas tells him, with a kind smile, and Daniel laughs without coughing for the first time in longer than Thomas can remember.

“How come you don't go to school anymore?” he then asks, and Thomas declines answering. Instead, he makes tea, and then goes to his own bedroom, plays with the instruments that mean something to him.

He does not like dance music. It is nearly impossible for him to tell anybody that, and they need the money.

\----

Naomi is drinking at the bar.

He has not forgiven her for how she judged him for making a mistake, but he understands it, now; understands where her anger comes from, and who it is for.

He sits down next to her without saying anything, and then mimes at the DJ to turn the music down a bit, just enough so that he does not have to shout all their mistakes throughout the entire club.

“You do not have to come back here,” is the first thing that he says, even though it is not planned.

“Don't I?” Naomi asks; she drinks too much, but her eyes look clear when she glances at him. “I have to make my peace with it somehow, don't I.”

“If she wanted drugs, she would have found them,” Thomas says. He's not sure if he means it until Naomi sighs and shakes her head.

“I gave them to her because she was asking me questions, and Emily was here. I don't--it's not about the drugs, don't you see?”

He does, and so he says nothing more; just orders her a bottle of water and leaves it on the bar for her.

She does not say thank you. Not many people in this country do, when they need to; only when they do not, because it is polite.

\----

Pandora is waiting for him outside of his house, a few days later.

“Panda,” he says, because he has no idea what to expect.

“JJ told me where you live now,” she says, and then looks at him with those big, scared eyes; Panda always looks afraid, but he thinks that is smart, as the world is a scary place to be in. It's the ones who are not afraid--Cook, Katie, Effy--who need to be the most worried.

“Yes,” he says, and glances at the house. It's not home.

“I--came to give you this,” she says, and from her backpack she produces a flag. “It's from your democratic republic, which I now know just means that you vote, and you've got government and not like, one bad man running things. But then we've got that, supposedly, and look at this country. I don't really understand. Do you?”

He unfolds the flag carefully, and then wraps it back up and looks at her without any idea of what to say. He does not want to say that he is sorry; he has said that too many times already.

“Yeah, so, I'm off to meet Eff, she's got men problems, and I know about those now, don't I,” Panda concludes, and Thomas lowers his eyes again.

“Thank you for this. It is more than I deserve,” he finally says, and she gives him a brief, tight hug that clears his lungs, lets him feel the air sharply.

The world suddenly seems alive. At least a bit.

\----

No Naomi tonight.

Effy and Freddie are rubbing up against each other in a corner; he has seen her take pills, earlier, and he does not think Freddie knows; but if Freddie can manage Cook, he can manage Effy. His eyes move further along the crowd, where Katie is drinking from a bottle and laughing with the shortest man he's ever seen.

Their eyes meet, briefly, and Katie's gaze sharpens; Thomas does not react, and after a moment Katie deliberately steps in closer to the dwarf and wraps an arm around his back. She is defiant, and proud. His mother would like her, if she was not also horribly impolite and inappropriate.

He scans further to the right, and stands up when he sees Cook show up; green tag still blinking at his ankle, and he is with JJ, who already looks concerned.

Thomas curses under his breath and cuts a path through the crowd, but before he can separate, someone bumps into him, hard. He glances over, and it's Emily--kissing some girl that he does not know.

He's torn, and looks at Cook and JJ again, but Cook is quiet, on his phone, texting someone; and JJ gets them both half pints of cider, and for the moment, that situation is bearable. He knows to keep Cook away from Freddie, and there is an entire room of people separating them; he has time.

Emily laughs and says, “Thomas”, as if they are friends; as if they have exchanged more than a few words since meeting.

She is drunk; perhaps high, also. She does not remember that he cheated, much like Naomi did; or she is too bonked, as Katie would say, to care. This is the problem; there are too many things in this country that let people forget what is important, and he hesitates for a moment before reaching for Emily's hand and pulling her away.

She follows easily to the manager's office, and there he eases her into a chair and rests against the desk. “She is not here, Emily.”

“Who?” Emily asks, and she is more like her sister than he knew, in that moment. He does not ask again, and eventually Emily glances at the floor and says, “It's not about her.”

“Do you still love her?” he asks.

“Do you still love Panda?” she fires back.

“Yes,” he says, easily and honestly, and her entire face crumples at the confession; she is not ready to hear that pretending fixes nothing, and he turns around and shuffles some papers together while she rubs at her eyes.

“How did Panda make it better, that first time?” she finally asks, with a hitch in her voice, and he realizes that Emily is not drunk at all. She is just empty, and that is more frightening than Effy and her drugs, Cook and his fists, or Katie and her need for everything to be exactly as she wants it.

“She did not.” He kneels next to her and reaches for her hand and stays silent until she looks at him. “She did not tell me; I found out, because Cook told me. I tried to forget it; I loved her, and I stayed with her, because I hoped that she would be good, when it mattered. That she would tell me.”

“But she didn't,” Emily concludes, and takes a deep breath before shaking her head. “It's not the cheating, is it.”

“No,” Thomas agrees, and squeezes her fingers.

“But you took her back, didn't you,” Emily asks, and it's so hopeful; he does not want to be the one to crush her, by pointing out that that did not even buy them an additional two months--that his anger did not fade, and that trust, sometimes, is more important than love.

He thinks back to the Love Ball, where Emily stood up and made declarations, and where Naomi let her, and where Panda apologized and begged, and where he thought that they stood another chance.

“Perhaps I should not have,” he says, and then tries for a smile, but it is hard, smiling, when everything is so wrong. “Perhaps if I had given myself more time, I would not have screwed up.”

Emily nods at that, faintly, and he does not think that she actually understands; but he has planted a seed tonight, and if she is careful, it will grow.

“Panda misses you,” Emily finally says, softly, and he smiles faintly.

“We must take care of ourselves, Emily; only then can we take care of each other.”

She tears up again at that, and he thinks about Naomi, at that bar, punishing herself for the wrong thing; his phone vibrates a moment later, and he hears a loud crash outside.

“Merde,” he says, and then rolls his eyes. “I will bet you twenty pounds that Cook has punched someone.”

“I'm not taking that bet,” Emily says, before chuckling a bit, and he wipes under her eyes until she smiles in a genuine way and says, “Thanks, Thomas. For listening, I mean.”

“You are welcome,” he tells her, and then runs his palms across his face, takes a deep breath, and opens the door to carnage.

\----

Freddie shakes his hand loose and then Effy appears, like a ghost, with a bag of ice. Her hands are shaking. She looks distraught, but steady, and presses the ice down on Freddie's hand. “He's your best friend,” she says, and Freddie is the one who does not compromise--but Effy, she is trying, and Thomas can tell that there is real fear in her actions now.

Still, he is at work, and so he gestures at one of the bouncers; and a moment later they're escorted out, but on their own feet, with some dignity left.

Cook, he finds in the bathroom, cleaning his face and cupping his eye.

“Thommo; here to make an already shit event even shitter, are you?” he asks, but it is without challenge, and that is when Thomas realizes that Cook lost the one thing he had.

“You did not punch anyone. You can stay,” he says, but stays in the doorway, at safe distance.

Cook glances at him in the mirror with his good eye, and then just nods. “Fair enough, mate. Fair enough.”

Thomas almost leaves, but then just says, “Cook--she will never make you happy.”

Cook does not respond, but something in the way his shoulders tighten says that he finally knows; that he has figured it out, and that is why he is not the one who punched anyone tonight.

Outside of the bathroom, Katie is kissing the short man, and when Thomas walks by them, she stops--respectfully--and smiles and says, “Thomas--this is Sam. My boyfriend.”

“I don't play for Bristol Rovers reserves,” Sam says, sticking out a hand, and Thomas does not know whether to laugh or just nod politely.

“So nice to meet you,” he finally says, and when Katie just reaches for Sam's hand, and Sam's eyes do not fall immediately to her breasts, he realizes he knows very little about the people that he sees the most.

Like his clothing, the people are layered, Thomas thinks, and goes back to the bar.

Emily joins him after a moment, and they drink a cup of coffee each.

“Time, huh?” she then says, still sadly, but there is determination in her now, too.

“Time,” he agrees, and closes his eyes--just for a moment.

\----

His hands fly along the strings, later that day, and he sings easy; Daniel shows up in his doorway after a minute--then, starts singing, too.

There are tears in Thomas' eyes when he stops, but he does not give in to them; instead, he starts playing again--a new song, one that he has spent months trying to piece together.

This morning, he is hardly trying at all--but the song is there in his bones, warming his body and his heart.

When Daniel claps and says, “That's good, Thomas--what's it called?”, the answer comes to him in an instant.

“Moon,” he says, and then repeats it, before his fingers start moving again.


	7. Effy (Month 7)

Day two hundred and five of giving a shit.  She's exhausted.

Every day, the temptation to give up increases just a bit more, but then being with Freddie reminds her of when she was five and Tony was seven, and he’d try to tickle her and she’d bite his fingers until he stopped laughing.   Nobody bothered telling her that love was like that more than anything else—which is ridiculous, because the idea of tenacious holding on frightens her a hell of a lot less than the idea that for some people, this stuff is easy.

\----

Freddie’s making his own way to school, and she rinses out her cereal bowl and puts it in the drying rack.  His dad walks in and says, “Hi, Ef—all good?”

He’s finally stopped calling her Elizabeth, which is something, but it doesn’t matter all that much when it’s Freddie that she’s meant to be getting closer to, and instead they’re drifting, slowly but surely.

“Think I’ll go home today, Leo,” she says, and he flicks on the coffee maker and nods a few times, before glancing back over.

“Has Freddie ever told you about his mum?”

The question shocks her, with its odd intimacy, as if something horrible lies behind it—something far worse than “She died”, which is all she knows—and more from the picture in the hallway than anything Freddie’s told her.

“No,” she says, shortly, because maybe this isn’t something else she needs to deal with.  Maybe, Freddie can just make up his mind, about whether or not he wants to trust her with something more; wants to trust her at all.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Leo says, and then pours himself a mug of coffee.  She’s already halfway out of the room, almost scampering out, when he adds, “Just take it easy on the boy, yeah?  He took it very hard and I sometimes think…”

“Time for college,” she says, with an incredibly forced smile, and then gets the hell out of that house.

She looks towards college—to the left—and to someplace far safer—to the right, and in the end, this isn’t so much a choice as just a consequence.

\----

And so she walks, slowly, in the rain.

\----

Naomi comes home approximately an hour and a half later, looking like she got drowned, holding a wet mess of flowers.

“Uh oh,” she says, fumbling with her keys and unlocking the door clumsily.  “Trouble in—wherever it is you are, these days?”

Effy doesn’t bother responding; just follows her in and shrugs out of her coat, hangs it over a kitchen chair to dry.  Naomi tosses her a pack of fags and a lighter a moment later, and they smoke silently for a moment, until Naomi looks at the flowers with such a comical look of disgust that Effy snorts.

“Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“I don’t,” Naomi says, rather emphatically; the eye roll that follows is almost a reminder of how things were this time last year, when they were being left alone.  When they weren’t trying.  “Katie’s recommendation.  The next one, if you can fucking believe it, was to get her some ice.”

Effy laughs again, more painfully.  “What, like, in her drink?”

“_Rocks, girl_,” Naomi mimics, in a way that just about reveals how much Katie she’s been tolerating for the purpose of becoming worthy again, and it’s suddenly not so funny anymore.

Effy stubs her cigarette out.  “And will you try?”

The defeat is palpable, when Naomi shivers and pulls her cardigan around herself more tightly.  “Why not, right?  Why not.”

\----

She visits Cook, just because his air is one of only two that she can breathe, these days.

He shushes her when he lets her in, and then points at the living room, where a miniature Cook is sleeping next to piles of empty pizza boxes.

It’s unsettling, and she’s happy when they’re out in the back yard, just in range of the wireless receiver; when he stretches his legs out, the thing starts beeping, and he curses before pulling them up to his chest.

“How’s the façade, then?” he asks.

“It’s not a façade.”

A short laugh.  “Sure, Ef.  You and Freds, all fucking loved up in his shed—romantic, innit, having sleepovers in a place we used to all piss in bottles in.  Can’t even tell you how many times I wanked off in there—fuck, I’m sure even Gay Jay managed to knock a few out in his day.”

She doesn’t say anything, and after a moment he sighs and offers her a cigarette.

“He’ll never accept you, you know.  You’re fucking having yourself on if you think he’s ever going to stop expecting this much of you.”

“You’re wrong,” Effy says, and Cook smiles at her in a way that’s eerily real before tapping at his ankle and saying, “Thirteen years of experience with the boy, Ef—am I really?”

The tears come on without warning and Cook slings an arm around her shoulder and then says, “Nothing wrong with being a massive cock-up.  It’s working for Naomio, it’s always worked for me.”

“I love him,” she says, and when Cook just nods and says, “Me too, love”, she realizes that she actually means it in a way that makes her want to throw up. “So fucking what, right?” 

Cook looks at her pityingly, and she squares her shoulders and flicks away the smoldering end of the fag before saying, “I didn’t—fuck.”

“You’re not naïve like Naomi is, are you—so don’t pretend you are.”

Effy wipes her sleeve past her eyes and then snorts laughter.  “Maybe I should buy him some flowers.”

“Stop faking it, babe; he can’t figure out what he wants if he’s not really seeing it.”

It’s the truth, she thinks, and the sun sets on them without any other words.

\----

Her mum’s doing laundry—a fucking miracle, that—and doesn’t even notice her in the doorway for a long moment.

“Ah, remembered you live here, minor and all that?” she then asks, and Effy rolls her eyes before heading out the door again—but for once, there’s some actual parenting, and a hand on her arm stops her movement.

“I know this isn’t much of a family, not anymore, but it is your fucking home, okay?” Mum says, and then hugs her, the same way Freddie does; that way with all those expectations that she can’t figure out.

“I know,” she says, even though it means nothing.  Nothing at all.

\----

The door to her bedroom opens slowly, and Freddie’s shape becomes clear to her before she sits up; then, he slips inside, and smiles at her faintly.  “Change of scenery?”

“Space,” she says, and watches his face fall.  “Just for a bit.”

“So, what—it’s too much, being with me?”

She sits up even further and watches him stand in the doorway, defensive as hell and already convinced that she’s going to end things.  Like that’s been on his mind all along, when really—“Not for me.  But I think it might be for you.”

He flinches and manages to look like a small child caught stealing all at once, and she pats the bed before anyone says anything they’ll regret.

“What—“

“This isn’t working,” she says, and watches his face set even further; he scoots out of reach when she goes to grab his hand, and then shakes his head.

“Should’ve fucking known that—“

“What will it take to make you happy?”

He blinks at that, and she tries for a smile, but she knows it comes out as a grimace.  “I fucking am happy, Ef—or I would be if it didn’t sound like you were going to—“

“You expect me to fuck up; you expect me to leave, and with every day that I don’t, you start to hate me,” she tells him, flatly, and tries not to let it hurt when he doesn’t deny it.  “What the fuck’s that about, Freddie?”

He doesn’t say anything for a long time, but then his shoulders fall and he sighs, “Shit”, really loudly, echoing through her room.

“Yeah,” she agrees.

\----

She doesn’t know when she fell asleep; doesn’t know what time it is when he starts talking, but it’s halting, and she has no idea if he expects her to be awake.

“My mum wasn’t sick, you know.”  There’s a rustle of clothing after that, and a loud sniff, and then he adds, “She didn’t die because it was time for her to.  She died because she wanted to, because she decided she’d had enough of life.  Do you know what that’s like?  Because—I don’t.  I don’t get it.  I don’t think I’ll ever get it.  But she took herself away because she wanted to; because there wasn’t anything that she wanted to stay for.”

Then there’s a palm, warm against her shoulder, and she tenses against it, even as he adds, “That’s what you were like, last year.  You didn’t care enough about Cook, or about me.  All you cared about was yourself.  Whatever it was that you wanted.”

She considers an apology, but instead just tries to relax into his hand, and when she finally manages, he says, “And I hate you for it.  The same way I hate her.”

“Things have changed,” she finally whispers into the room, and then the bed dips and a crack of light breaks into the room.

“Maybe for you.  But I’m still me,” he says, equally softly, and then the door closes behind him.

She doesn’t sleep a wink, and in the morning, opens up her blinds almost angrily—stares out into the world.

\----

It’s not fair, but then neither are many things; the fact that some people can be forgiven, like Thomas, when others can’t, like Naomi.  The fact that the only thing that inspires real change is apparently getting hit by things; when you’re as big a fucking cunt as Tony, a whole bus, and when you’re a minor pest like Katie Fitch, apparently gravity and rock will work it.  The fact that drugs only help in the short run, and in the long run they just turn her into her mother, which—there isn’t anything more ugly than that.

The fact that she doesn’t get a choice in caring about him, not even when he cuts her to the bone.

“Fuck,” she says out loud, and then goes and does a week’s worth of dishes and makes her mum breakfast, and she sits next to her while it’s slowly being eaten.

“Thanks for giving a shit, love,” her mum says, without accusation, and Effy reaches for her wrist—circles it slowly and then presses down on the pulse point.

“You need to start giving one, too,” she says, and when her mum looks at her with a bit of clarity for the first time in fuck knows how long, Effy discovers what the difference is between trying and doing.

\----

Naomi’s wrapping up a small box of something when Effy comes in through the kitchen door, and she swats it out of her hand a moment later.

“Are you serious,” she then says, not asks, because Naomi looks too fucking embarrassed and guilty to be anything but.

“I—I’ve fucking tried everything else, haven’t I?”

“Faking it isn’t trying, Naomi,” Effy says, and thinks about Cook and Freddie and their friendship, and her mum and Tony and her dad, and everything else that requires just a few, short moments of reality to be sorted out.  “And Emily isn’t a fucking moron.  She’ll see right through this.”

“So what?” Naomi snaps.  “I just do nothing?  Pray that some day she’ll fucking get over it, and then I’ll get my—“

“What, eightieth chance?” Effy cuts in dryly, and raises her eyebrows.

“Oh, fuck you—like you’re perfect.”

Effy just smiles and says, “Feel better?”

“No; too easy, like kicking a puppy.”

“Funny; that’s how I’d describe your relationship with Emily.”

Whatever the fucking present was, it’s heavy, Effy finds out when it hits her squarely in the chest.

“So what then, if not—faking it?” Naomi asks, sarcastically, but Effy’s seen her fucking cry herself to sleep often enough to realize she means it, in her own way.

“Slowly, slowly,” she murmurs, and then thinks that it might be the start of a poem, or a song; she doesn’t really know, but when Naomi just snorts and shakes her head, she supposes it doesn’t really matter.

\----

When she gets to the shed, Freddie and Cook are there together, playing some fucking video game together; Freddie wins after a moment and Cook clobbers him on the shoulder and calls him a cheating tosser, and Effy startles at the picture of how easy their lives were before she came into them.

“Princess,” Cook says, spotting Effy in the doorway, and then tosses her a controller.  “If you’re going to hang out in our shed, you’ve got to learn to fucking play Halo.”

Freddie snorts and then takes a deep drag, before blowing a few rings up at the ceiling.  “Wasting your time, mate; she doesn’t play videogames.”

“Maybe nobody’s asked me if I wanted to,” Effy says; the words sort of come out by accident, but she realizes that they’re true.  Neither of them ever fucking ask her anything anymore, not since she handled their first and only real questions so poorly.

“So?” Cook asks, and scoots over until there’s a space between them.

She sits down into it and takes Cook’s controller with one hand, Freddie’s hand with the other.

“So—teach me what to do,” she says; the faking finally stops a minute into Cook’s half-arsed, stoned tutorial, when Freddie’s fingers curl around hers, and he whispers, “Just press that button on the right a whole lot, we’ve got it set to easy” in her ear.


	8. Cook (Month 8)

 

 

His mate’s got the girl, and he’s still breathing.

Life’s turned fairly askew in the past few months, but he’s gotten used to his curfew and fuck, last week he even found himself looking through the jobs section of the local newspaper; bit like pissing in the wind that, trying to fix something up for himself when he’s still got a right menacing beeping-aid on his fucking ankle, telling him when to go where.

Instead, he gets up in the morning and drops Paddy off at school.  The urge to punch people and wreck shit seems to have passed quickly, and it’s funny how quickly things can change when you’re ten.  In Cook, it all roils like it has for years now; the anger with his mum, his dad, with everything.  It lashes through him just underneath the surface, but he’s got a collar around his foot reminding him of what happens when he lets it out.

And so here he is: his mate’s got the girl—and he’s really got her now, not the way they thought they had each other for most of this year, with both of them feeling like shit, worthless really—and he’s still breathing.

The air feels pretty good, and he gets out his football and picks up the remote without Paddy noticing; clicks off the telly.

“C’mon.”

Paddy drops the guitar and turns around, and Cook almost laughs when his face falls.  Maybe not the fucking infallible older brother no matter what after all, then.

“Football’s for chavs and pussies,” Paddy mumbles, and Cook rolls his eyes.

“I played for years, mate. Was pretty fucking good.”  When that has no impact, Cook bounces the ball once—it echoes throughout the living room and his mum yells _‘for fuck’s sake!_’ from her studio—and then adds, “And girls love it.  Bit of a jock, yeah.  Girls absolutely love it.”

“Yeah?” Paddy asks, skeptically.

“Yeah, I’ve got—“  Cook has to bite the inside of his cheek to not start laughing, but it’s true.  “I’ve got this mate, her name’s Katie, and all she ever wanted was to date a footballer.”

“Yeah, but like a premier league one, right.”

“Nah,” Cook says, and then tosses the ball to Paddy, who catches it clumsily.  “Birds aren’t that tough.  C’mon.  I’ll show you how to keep it up.”

\----

His brother’s smile reminds him of scoring a goal, just once, when he was nine; they put him on defense because he was aggressive and big for his age, and that’s where he went, but just once, he thought ‘fuck it’ about the entire formation, and stormed to the front and scored a goal.

His mum wasn’t there; blowing some other kid’s father in the bathroom, long before she could call it art.

The anger swells, but he clamps down on it when Paddy manages to hold the ball up three times.

“All right,” he calls out, and Paddy runs down the field like a fucking striker, arms out as wings, hooting in the air.

That’s a kid with a chance, right there, Cook thinks, and his rage nestles closer to his chest again; burrows into him, but it doesn’t hurt quite as bad.

He chases after Paddy until his ankle starts beeping; then yells, “Get the fuck back here!” and laughs.

\----

Now here’s someone else who knows about anger.

They haven’t shagged since that first time, which he realizes was more about her punishing herself than about him, but now she’s just being a little bitch about it.

“I’m not fucking you,” he tells her, and she slaps him in the face.

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because, love, I’ve got a dick, see—“ he says, pointing down at where her hand is, “And all you really want going on right now is pussy, isn’t it.  You close your eyes and you see red, don’t you.”

Another slap.  “You don’t know what I’m thinking; stop trying to pretend that you’re clever, James, because you’re not.  You’re only good for one thing, and—“

Two months ago—hell, maybe even two days ago, that would’ve gotten her exactly what she wanted; an angry, degrading shag up against a wall, where he didn’t think about her at all.  Today, on the other hand, he smiles.  “And what are you good for, Naomikins?”

She tries to manhandle him out of the house at that point, but all he does is wrap his arms around her and say, “It’s okay—it’s okay, I’ve got you”, and then she starts bawling hysterically.

“Fuck,” he then says, and then she’s laughing and crying, until she’s so fucking tired she almost falls asleep standing up.

It’s complicated, this good man thing—he’ll have to ask Freddie for pointers, he thinks, when she’s tucked under a blanket on the sofa and he’s finishing off her last bottle of Stella in the fridge.

\----

When she wakes up, she’s a bit more subdued, and less focused on giving him a boner, so he suspects round two of the conversation will go a bit better.

“You finished the beer,” she says, before making a face and lying down on her back again.  “Great.  Will have to go out and get more before my mum starts thinking I’m a fucking alcoholic on top of a total waste of space.”

“Get over yourself, love,” Cook says, mildly, and then stubs out his last cigarette.  “You’re not that special; fuck, you’re not even that broken.”

Naomi snorts and rolls onto her side, peers up at him.  “Yeah?  What will it take to make me really broken, then?”

He puts his hands behind his head and stretches his legs out; knocks the tagging monitor against her coffee table, and then says, “That’s a start; but really—it’s got to get to the point where you want to either hurt yourself, and I don’t really know too fucking much about side of it; should ask Effy, really—or you know, it’s going to get to the point where you want to destroy everyone around you.”

She doesn’t say anything for a long time, and then just asks, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, and then leans forward, rests his elbows onto his knees and stares at the table.  “Yeah, that was me for a long time, I think.  Bent on making everyone fucking unhappy.”

“But you’re over it now, aren’t you?” she asks, and maybe he’s wrong; maybe there’s a category of broken that’s just fucking pathetic, and if so, Naomi’s ambling over to it at her own pace, asking things like, “And that’s when you became too good to fuck me?”

“I like you, yeah,” he says, glancing at her just once.  “And I’d shag you in a heartbeat if I thought that it would help either of us.  But you’re never going to stop loving her, and I’m never going to start loving you.  So what the fuck’s the point?”

“I didn’t realize there had to be a point,” Naomi says, and when he glances at her again, she looks almost fucking proud of him.

“Maybe there does.  I’m—fuck, whatever. Let’s go out. We can talk about your women troubles.”

She laughs, and he lifts her off the sofa and after a moment’s thought, carries her all the way up the stairs and deposits her in the bath.  “Bit of hygiene always impresses, Campbell.”

“Says the lad who used to wipe off his crotch with A4 after sex,” she says, but starts gamely taking off her clothes, and he realizes he’s a bigger man than he thought he was when he manages to get out of the bathroom even after he spots a tit in the process.

\----

Keith pours them both a free one, and Naomi drinks cider like a lad; it’s a quality he appreciates about her, and he’s about to tell her when the door opens and in comes nearly everyone they know.

“Fuck,” Naomi sighs, hair falling into her face, and Cook kicks her under the table.

“The fuck are you so worried about?”

“Emily doesn’t like our—friendship.  I told her we snogged once, you know, she probably thinks we’re—“

“So?” he asks, and rolls his eyes.  “You fucking tell her that we’re not, and I fucking tell her that we’re not, and if she wants to make sure, she’s welcome to start living with you again.”

Naomi’s lips twitch.  “Think that’ll work?”

“And how many relationships have I been in, huh?”

“Half of one, at least,” Effy says, somewhere behind him, and then leans down and kisses him on the cheek.  “Hi,” she directs at Naomi, and Cook reaches for her lower back, puts a hand there, before turning around and gripping Freddie’s hand as well.

“Howsit?” Freddie asks, and then glances at Naomi with about as non-judgmental a look that Freds is capable of.  “All right, Naomi?”

“Yeah, doing all right,” she says, tipping her cider up at him ironically before finishing it off, and Cook laughs before looking at Effy.

“Get her another, will you?”   He doesn’t have to specify that it needs to be watered the fuck down, if she’s going at this pace.

\----

“Didn’t realize we were all chums again,” Naomi asks, snidely, when Freddie and Effy settle at the table with them.

“We never have been,” Freddie replies, equally smartly, and Naomi laughs after a moment.

“Good, at least we’re being realistic now.  That’s a start.”

Effy says nothing, just glances over to the table where Katie and—fucking hell, they weren’t kidding about her boyfriend, what a fucking squared-up dwarf that is—and then there’s Emily, staring at the top of the table, scratching at it with her nails.

This is going to get ugly, Cook thinks, at the same time that Effy says, “Maybe we should relocate.”

“No, fuck it,” Naomi says, sitting up straighter and staring at Emily more directly.  “We’re all adults, and other than furniture, what is she going to throw at me here?”

“Necklace didn’t go over well, either?”




“If only Katie’s brain was the size of her tits…” Naomi responds, and Freddie goes, “Hey—“ before laughing as well.

That’s when a chair is pushed back roughly, and Emily gets up and disappears into the bathroom.

About three people move to get to her at once, but Cook glares at Naomi and then hurries over to where Katie is and says, “How about I handle this?”




“With what, your cock?  Sorry, but that’s not going to work for her,” Katie says, raising her eyebrows and producing a smug little smile all at once.

Cook laughs and shakes his head.  “Katiekins—come on, thought you were meant to understand girls, yeah?”

“Um, duh—I am a fucking girl,” she says, sharply.  “And she’s my sister and—“

“And you’re in a happy fucking relationship, aren’t you.  Just tip-top loved-up, the two of you,” he says, with a nod towards the table, where the dwarf is watching the ongoings curiously.  “Maybe she doesn’t want to hear from someone who’s got their shit all sorted out, hm, Katie?  Maybe—you and your child bride are just rubbing salt in it.”

She looks like she’s going to go on the defensive, but in the end she just nails him in the arm and says, “Fine, but if you’re not both back within five minutes, I’m going to come in there and cut your sack off—do you understand?”

“Fair play,” he tells her, and then heads into the bathroom.

\----

The crying’s clearly coming from the back-most stall, and so Cook climbs onto the next loo over and then pushes up and over the divider, until he lands in front of Emily, who can’t even stop crying long enough to look at him.

“Hey—muff monkey,” he says, and reaches for her knee.  “It’s not all so bad, is it?”

“The fuck would you know,” she mumbles, rubbing her make-up everywhere and taking a few deep, heaving breaths.

“Well, the only girl I’ve ever fucking loved is in there,” he says, with a jab towards the door, “making out with my best fucking friend.  That’s what I know.  What do you know?”

Emily doesn’t say anything for a long while, and then lowers her hands and leans her head back against the wall, shaking it slowly.  “That—I still miss her.  Every day, you know.  I wake up and I roll over like she’s going to be there; and then all I see is Katie, snoring with her mouth wide open, and it all comes rushing back.”

“Naomi’s a stupid bint,” Cook says, sitting down on the floor and leaning against the door; he can just about see the outline of Emily’s face.  “And I don’t mean because she fucked you around; people make mistakes, you know. It’s never going to be perfect.”

“I didn’t want perfect,” Emily replies, but it’s tiredly.  She’s not so angry anymore, and maybe that’s why they’re stuck like this; it’s much harder to stop being sad than it is to stop being angry.

“She thinks you did.”

“I never asked for anything—just that she not fucking lie to me, that she didn’t sleep with anyone else, and that—“

“Emily, Emily,” Cook says, shaking his head and laughing.  “Look—you’re a good sort.  You’re nice and easy, you know?  You know what you want, you go out and you get it, and then you’re happy.  But do you really think that shit is like that for anyone else?  I mean, fuck—forget about the entire world.  Look at our friends.”

She doesn’t say anything in response, and after a moment Cook scrambles back up and offers her a hand.  “I’m not saying that she didn’t fuck up.  I’m saying that—maybe she just doesn’t know any better.  What’s her mum like?  Her dad?  You know what dating’s like; parents still together, yeah?  Everyone living, happy fucking family?   Even Katie just wants to get married, even if it’s to fucking Half Pint in there.  That’s your life.”

Emily sighs deeply and says, “It’s what I wanted our life to be.  It’s not a bad thing to want, is it?”

Their hands meet, and he pulls her up and into a hug.  “Doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad.  What matters is that she doesn’t think it’s possible.”

She shudders and then laughs tiredly.  “When did you get so fucking clever, Cook?”

His wrist watch starts to beep.  “Cocked up one too many times, didn’t I.”

\----

Freddie gets up when he gets out and points at his wrist, and Cook nods.  “Can you get me a lift, mate?”

“Sure—“ Freddie says, with a glance to Effy, who looks at a now-blisteringly-drunk Naomi and shakes her head.

“I’ll see you both later,” she says instead, and then produces a smile he’s not ever seen on her before; it’s relaxed and genuine.  “I want a rematch on Tekken 6, by the way—been looking up some moves on the internet.”

“You’re on,” Cook says, and then walks around the table and kisses Naomi on the cheek.  “Be good, you; it’s not all as shit as you think it is.”

Naomi burps in response, and then sighs, and he laughs before grabbing his jacket and following Freddie out.

\----

Paddy’s reading a book when he gets in, and he finds his mum in the kitchen making dinner.

“The fuck’s this, then?” he asks, before grabbing a glass and pouring some juice in it.

“I just thought that—well, if you’re going to try to sort him out, the least I can do is pretend to be a mother, just for a few years, right?” she says, before cursing when she’s burned her hand on some water or something.

“Fuck—Mum, you’ve got to—“ Cook says, and presses a dish towel in her hand before just ushering her out of the way and grabbing the pot off the stove, draining it quickly.

Ten minutes later, a real meal is served, and after a kick to the shins, Paddy’s picked up both fork and knife and is neatly cutting up a sausage.

“What?” Cook asks, when his mum’s staring at him with a strange expression.

“Nothing, just—didn’t know you could cook.”

His fork pauses involuntarily on the way back up, and then he forces a shrug.  “s’not that fucking hard, is it?  Just following instructions.”

“And you’re so good at that, aren’t you,” his mum says, dryly, until Paddy giggles.

Cook just shrugs and says, “Maybe I can be.  If I want to be.”

\----

The next day, he goes back through the newspaper listings, and circles one for a dishwasher at a local Italian.  It’s not much, but it’s something that he bets he can blag his way into even with his record, and if there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s that he shouldn’t expect too much from anyone, least of all himself.

“Football?” Paddy asks in the doorway.

“Yeah, Pads, sure.  Give me a second, yeah?”  he responds, before carefully folding up the newspaper and putting it next to his bed.

When he reaches for the ball, he accidentally grabs one of his old trophies and looks at it for a moment—league champions, 1999—before putting it on his night stand.  No point in being angry about it anymore, he knows, and then kicks the ball out of his room and towards the stairs, where Pads is waiting for him.

“Show me what you’ve got,” he says, and follows the little man outside.


	9. Emily (Month 9)

Katie sits down next her and smiles at something on her phone, and Emily can barely bring herself to not leave immediately—but then the phone’s flipped shut and Katie just sighs and says, “Ems—seriously, you need to put her out of her misery if you’re not going to take her back.”

Emily doesn’t know how to respond at first, and then manages a short laugh.  “Never thought I’d see you like this; campaigning for her.”

“Look, if I ever dated anyone who tried this fucking hard to like, make being a tosser up to me, I wouldn’t let them go.  So what if she cocked up?  You’re still here, moping about because you’re not with her; what the fuck do you get out of holding a grudge?”

“It’s not a grudge, Katie,” Emily says, and then just rubs at her eyes.  They’re so tired, she doesn’t really know how she’s been holding them open all these months; how she’s gotten any work done, but the uni acceptance letters have trickled in, and she’s even somewhat ready for her A-levels.

She wonders if Naomi is, even a little, and then pushes that thought away.

“All I’m saying is that if you’re going to be miserable anyway, you might as well be miserable with her.  I mean—fuck, Ems, she really loves you.  In her own way, maybe, but it’s real, isn’t it?”

Katie sounds surprised at what she’s saying, and after a moment Emily inhales sharply.  There’s been too much crying already, for both of them, and she’s so sick of it; so sick of feeling out of sorts just because Naomi let her down.  As if there hadn’t been plenty of warning signs throughout the entire time she’s known her.

“I feel so stupid.  I think that’s the worst of it,” she says, and then blinks when she realizes it’s the truth.  “She made me feel so dumb—to trust her, to love her so much.  To—want so much, when she really didn’t.”

“She hurt you—whatever.  Stupid is dating someone who’s in love with someone else and then gets you hit over the head with a rock—nine fucking stitches, right?  That’s stupid,” Katie says after a pause, subdued and serious.  “You’re not there.  You’re not desperate enough to be there.”

“Neither are you; not anymore, anyway.”

“Well, of course not,” Katie agrees, a bit sharply, and then slings one arm around Emily’s shoulder sand presses a kiss to her cheek.  “Just—figure it out, okay?  This has been going on long enough and like, we’re moving to different cities.  I don’t want to have to worry about you constantly, like if you’re going to go jump off something tall or—“

“Katie,” Emily cuts her off, the bile rising in her throat quickly.  It’s the jumping, always the jumping.  She dreams about it now—how Sophia must’ve just wanted to talk to Naomi, how Naomi got her to fuck off horribly, and how she herself was oblivious to it all.  “Don’t.”

Katie sighs and then gets up; an invitation to go and get lunch with Sam is issued, but Emily just shakes her head.  It’s not even that they’re vile together—Sam’s an all right sort, and he worships the ground Katie walks on without pretending she’s lovely all the time—but it’s more that, she looks at them and thinks, “that should’ve been us”, even now.

It hurts, and she forces all that pain back inside and goes to do some Philosophy coursework, just to make time pass a bit more quickly.

\----

Gina opens the door, and Emily shuffles her feet before saying, “Hi—sorry I didn’t—I mean.”

Other parents would say something like, “You should be in college.”  Gina just says, “Come on in, then.  I’ll get the kettle on.”

The reality of just how much Naomi stole from her hits her squarely in the chest when she walks into the house and heads for the cabinet that holds the mugs without being prompted; gets the sugar out, and puts it all on the table before sitting down at her seat.  Her fucking chair.

“Where’s the espresso maker?” she finally asks, when the counter looks particularly bare.

“Slight accident,” Gina says, then tilting her head towards the wall behind Emily; when she turns around there’s a massive crack in the plaster, and she laughs and sighs at the same time.

“How have things been?” Gina asks, when it’s clear that Emily is almost too afraid to bring up anything else.

“Good.  I got into Exeter, so—that’s something.  Right?”

“I don’t know, Emily; you tell me,” Gina says, and pushes a full, steaming mug towards her.  “Ten months ago you would’ve been happy as can be.  Now?”

“Yeah, now,” Emily says, and only then manages to look Gina in the eye.  “I’m—I don’t know what to say.  I mean, she’s your daughter.”

“Yes, meaning I’m partially responsible for the wreck that’s walking around now, sleepwalking through college, just hanging out with Effy and Cook and crying herself to sleep every night,” Gina says, dryly.

“It’s not your fault she’s a—“

“Just say it, Emily.”

“No,” Emily says, shaking her head.  “I don’t mean it.  I mean, I feel like I might, but I don’t.  I still—fuck, I hate it, but I still love her.  I still want to be with her, even now that I can barely remember why I liked her at all.  She ruined everything, and all I want is for her to make it better.”

“And what would that take?”  Gina asks, blowing on her own tea and then taking a careful sip.

“I don’t know,” Emily confesses.

“That’s a tough ask for Naomi then, isn’t it.”

Emily doesn’t know what else to say; finishes her tea silently, and then gets surprised into a hug on the way out.

“It was good to see you.  I know that you feel strange, but—you were good for her, Emily.  Come visit more often, if you can,” Gina says, before pressing a kiss to her forehead.

It hurts almost more than what Naomi actually did, the way her actions have sent ripples through the rest of Emily’s life.  It’s actively swept her away, in the end.

\----

It has been almost six months since they’ve spoken.

Emily is the one to make the call, in the end, because Naomi hasn’t dared call since she got caught out; and that’s been a lot longer than six months.

“’ello?” she hears on the other end, and then frowns at her phone.

“Cook?”

“Ah, yeah—Naomi, get back here, it’s not a fucking joke; it’s her,” is called out in the background, and how is it that somehow, together, they’ve made her feel like the bad guy in all of this?

“Hello?” Naomi asks, a few moments later, sounding like she’s talking through a piece of tissue; it’s so distant that Emily almost hangs up, but then she forces herself to try.

“I just want to know what you think will change, if we get back together.”

“What?” Naomi asks, more clearly, and then says, “Em—I’m sorry, but you’ve completely—“

“I don’t want an answer now, I just—I don’t think anything’s different, is it?  I still want a real relationship; I want commitment, and trust, and for you to give me bits of yourself that you don’t share with other people, and you will still feel like I’m trying to trap you into something horrible.”  Her voice comes out sounding thick with regret, but at least now she knows that she’s right, when Naomi’s breath catches, and when she says, “Emily” one more time, sounding more out of sorts than ever.

“I don’t know how to make that better.  I don’t know how to—stop wanting you, that much.  And you don’t know how to be with someone else.  It’s not me, Naomi, that’s the problem.  It’s—“

“I know,” Naomi says, and then covers the phone briefly; seconds later a door slams, and Naomi says, “I’m sorry, he just—he doesn’t need to hear—“

“It’s fine,” Emily says, and just like that, with a bit of normalcy, they’re back to almost acting like they’ve never had a horrible break-up; like they’ve never had a relationship at all.

“It’s not.  I know it’s not.  None of it is,” Naomi says, and then takes a deep breath; Emily can picture her squaring up, straightening herself.

“I just—I wish you’d talked to me. A year ago.  Or two years ago.”

“Would you have listened?”

“Yes,” Emily answers, emphatically.  The line stays silent, until she sighs and adds, “I would’ve tried, anyway.”

“And so did I.  I tried.”

“Yeah.”

It’s a weird form of intimacy, staying on the phone together without saying anything, until Emily’s mobile lets out an alert beep, and she adds, “I’m almost out of credit.  I just—I just wanted to say that I’ve been thinking about it and I’m sorry, but—“

“Ems, please just leave it at that, okay?  I’m sorry too,” Naomi says, sounding rushed, and then she hangs up, before Emily’s phone can cut her off all on its own.

No more tears, Emily reminds herself, and then throws her phone across the room so hard that the battery pops out at the back and the Daniel Craig poster on Katie’s side of the room is left looking oddly bruised.

\----

It feels like the end.  Naomi smiles faintly at her in the hallway on Monday and she sticks up a half-hearted hand in turn; Katie watches it happen and squints before adding, “So—sorting it out, finally?”

“It’s over,” Emily says, and reaches for her combination lock; twists it open a bit too quickly, and then has to put the code in again.

“What, like—forever?” Katie asks.  The disappointment in her voice is a rank reminder of how much everything has changed in the past ten months; everything except her and Naomi, still squaring off with how much they can take and give.

“Yeah, it’s just—it’s never going to work, Katie.  And I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” Emily asks.

Katie hugs her silently after a moment, and that too is almost too much to bear.

“I’ve got French; I’ll see you later,” Emily says, and slams her locker shut without looking Katie in the eye.

\----

She finds herself staring directly at Naomi’s back all through their final English exam, and she almost thinks she’s going to heave when Naomi starts twirling a lock of hair in concentration; it’s too vivid a reminder of other times when she did exactly that, when they were still together—when Emily could still clearly remember how randomly Naomi’s hair curled, how it felt running through her fingers.

She almost runs out of the building when she’s done, and takes a few deep breaths, bending over and clutching her own knees.

“All right?” Freddie asks, putting a hand on her shoulder.  “Saw you come out; know how you feel, too much pressure on this one test, isn’t it.”

“I—yeah, I just needed some—fuck,” Emily says, which isn’t much of an explanation of anything.

“I hear you and Naomi are—finito, as Cook put it.”  It’s not said unkindly, and after a moment Freddie removes his hand, starts rummaging through his pocket.  “Spliff?”

“No, thanks, I—I just don’t think it’ll do anything.  Tried drugs already; they didn’t help.”

Freddie nods and then just watches for a moment, silent until Emily straightens again.

“I didn’t think there was anything left to do, with Effy.  I thought that—no matter how hard she tried, I’d just never be able to forgive all the bad shit, you know?  But—people surprise you, sometimes.  You just have to be open to being surprised.”

“She had three years to surprise me, Freddie.  How long am I meant to wait for it to actually happen?” Emily reminds him.

Freddie shrugs.  “So stop waiting.”

“It’s not that easy,” Emily says, and spots a certain bicycle in the shed, a few meters over. 

She remembers riding double on it over the summer, completely out of balance and with fear in her heart, until Naomi’s arm had wrapped around her waist and she’d said something idiotic like, “If I wanted to kill you, there are far better ways.”

It’s sad that those are the good times, Emily knows, and yet she still can’t help but want them back.

\----

On the day of her last exam, she clears out her locker and finds an envelope there that she knows she didn’t leave.

It says her name in a deceptively familiar scrawl that reminds her of grocery shopping, that fucking chalkboard in the kitchen where they’d leave chuff messages for each other.  All it says is ‘Emily’, in sloppy block letters, but her heart nearly stops when her hand wraps around the edges of the envelope anyway.

She takes it home and opens it immediately, locking their bedroom door just in case Katie’s opted against celebrating being done with some Sam-oriented surf and turf somewhere—miracles could happen—and then slides her finger under the glue, works the flap upwards.

Inside it is—and she almost starts laughing when it unfolds, because it’s clearly a double-spaced, paragraphed piece of academic writing, and out of everything she was expecting, this was barely even on the list—but then she spots the title, and her air just leaves her lungs in a broken whisper.

“Difficulties Children from Unstable Households Face in Developing Their Own Meaningful Emotional Connections”, by Naomi Campbell.

It’s twelve fucking pages long, and Emily reads it three times before finally letting the paper flutter to the ground.

“Fuck,” she says, to nothing in particular, and then picks it up and grabs her jacket.

\----

“I don’t even know what to say,” she states, when Naomi opens the door, looking nervous as hell and incredibly uncomfortable.

“I—it’s not meant to be an excuse, in case that wasn’t clear; I thought about the title several times, and I know it reads like I’m just saying that it’s all my Mum’s fault, but—“

“You wrote me a fucking essay on why you fucked us up so bad,” Emily interrupts, and then looks at the last page of the paper.  “And then—what the fuck, Naomi?  ‘_Someone who has never seen a successful relationship in practice is incredibly unlikely to immediately understand how they are supposed to behave in one, and they are very much likely to hurt others in the process of finding out_.’  No citation on that one, is there?  Author’s own thoughts, then?”

“It’s an apology,” Naomi says, sounding a bit more put out.  “I thought you’d—understand, what it means.”

Emily stares at the page again, until suddenly a few wet splotches appear on it, and only then does she realize she’s crying.  “You fucking tit.  After all this time, you think that you doing a bit of research will impress me enough—“

“I don’t want to be like this, Emily—for God’s sake, I don’t want to keep fucking up everything that’s important to me.  Don’t you see that?”

They’re not just her fucking tears, and she lets the paper fall to the ground a moment later and stares up at Naomi a bit helplessly.

“So what’s the point?  I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but your conclusion appears to be that you will go on hurting me until you sort yourself out.”

Naomi snorts and wipes at her eyes, then her nose.  “It’s actually more that, maybe I shouldn’t be with you, or anyone, until I can figure out how to not be such a fucking tit.”

“Twelve pages,” Emily repeats, and then feels a bubble of laughter come up.  “Jesus.”

“It was twenty at first, but then I—I got rid of a whole lot of stuff.  I thought that maybe, you’d—“  Naomi fidgets, and then reaches for the doorframe, and then finally sighs and looks up.  “I was hoping that perhaps if I left some things open, we could—talk about some of this.  Maybe.”

Somewhere in the house, behind Naomi, Emily knows there’s a wall of pictures of them, together; she wasn’t the one who put it together, and even after she supplied some of the pictures, she sort of laughed when Naomi started turning them into a massive collage, with the explanation of, “Isn’t this what people do, when they’re in a relationship?”

Yeah, maybe—maybe she was wrong.  Maybe something has changed, Emily thinks, and it’s only when Naomi opens the door a bit further—tentatively, but with a look in her eyes that screams gratitude—that she realizes that she said it out loud.

She doesn’t take it back; instead, she steps inside and says, “I leave in a month and a half; you know that, don’t you?”

Naomi nods after a moment, then shrugs, and then closes the door quietly.  “A month and a half is a long time.”

It’s clear they’re both thinking about last summer; but when Naomi runs a hand through her hair after an awkward pause and says, “I’ll put the kettle on”, Emily feels something in her chest ease—just a bit.

**Author's Note:**

> To the usual suspects, who supported me in putting the final nail in this coffin.


End file.
